#terrors

Most nightmares are caged in their realm by implausibilities. The sleeper slogs through quicksand in a fun house of frightening nonsense and disjointed mumbo jumbo. But everything’s all better once the bedside lamp is back on, because reality, even when it’s bad, is easily distinguished from night terror. Except for the trying-to-scream dream. That one’s pretty much spot-on. ↗

— Jamie Mason

#night-terrors #nightmares #scream #terror #dreams

All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block; and if in the course of years I have got so used to my nightly ordeal as almost to swagger while the familiar axe is coming out of its great velvet-lined case, initially I had no such comfort or defense: I had nothing - save a door left slightly ajar into Mademoiselle's room. Its vertical line of meek light was something I could cling to, since in absolute darkness my head would swim, just as the soul dissolves in the blackness of sleep. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#night-terrors #sleep #sleeplessness #somnus #life

The loss of Eden is personally experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood. ↗

— Dennis Potter

#childhood #eden #every #experienced #leave

Freud was a hero. He descended to the Underworld and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone. ↗

— R. D. Laing

#descended #freud #head #hero #him

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#experience #terrors #experience

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table. ↗

— Max Beerbohm

#breakfast #dreams #insist #people #table

Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors. ↗

— Bill Forsyth

#cope #dark #human #human race #humor

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#denies #fantasies #far #fill #flock

Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#myth #often #partakes #progress #religion

One of the glories and terrors of working in public is that you do see if your output means anything to anyone. ↗

— Jenny Holzer

#anything #glories #means #output #public