Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Who can wrestle against Sleep? - Yet is that giant very gentleness.

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.

Sleep has no place it can call its own.

Insomniac is an impassioned work-an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis, and the kind of obsessive brooding we associate with the insomniac state. Much here is fascinating, and much is upsetting; here is a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over.

I don't like to sleep. I'm missing something when I'm sleeping.

Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched.

Sleep came slower than a frigid woman.

Sleep and I do not have a good relationship. We have never been good friends. I am constantly chasing sleep and then pushing it away. A good night's sleep is my white whale. Like Ahab, I am also a total drama queen about it. I love to talk about how little sleep I get. I brag about it, as if it is a true indication of how hard I work.

O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, 1710. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

I'm so tired, but I can't sleep. Standing on the edge of something much too deep.

Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow.

I just can't sleep tonight knowing that things ain't right.

Some nights I sleep like a baby. Other nights it's, Oh God, I just came up with a bomb shot.

Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

I've been waiting for sleep to offer up the day with both hands.

I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man.

It was daunting at first. I did have insomnia for two weeks.

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.

Another intruder that plagues our good health is sleeplessness. Insomnia is much like constipation in that stress or nervous tension can bring it on or aggravate it until there's almost no coping with it. That's why you find sleeping pills in so many medicine cabinets next to the laxatives.

O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?

I've dreamed a lot, but i'm not a very good sleeper.

I do not sleep, but it's totally fine, because I love what I do.