John Banville Quotes

Sleep: the stepchild of Death.

Night, having Sleep, the brother of Death.

Downy sleep, death's counterfeit.

The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.

The only thing that comes to a sleeping man is dreams.

I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything, but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.

Sleep - death without dying - living, but not life.

Death is the most blessed dream.

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.

Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

To sleep perchance to dream

When you're in bed, you're dead

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.

Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.

Death-counterfeiting sleep.

And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

I think about death most of the day, every day. We can't escape death, and choosing to ignore it only makes it more scary.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Sometimes I would make myself very still and try to imagine myself dead. I tried to invoke the feeling of the very last breath I would take.

I do not envy the headache you will have when you awake. In the meantime, dream of large women.

I don't sleep. I hate those little slices of death.