35 Nightmare Quotes

In the stillness of the night, when shadows deepen and silence reigns, the mind often drifts into unsettling realms where reality blurs and fear takes form. These nocturnal musings can be both fascinating and terrifying, offering a peek into the darker corners of our subconscious. Whether born from ancient folklore, psychological intrigue, or personal experience, nightmares have been a source of literary and artistic inspiration for centuries. In this post, we'll delve into a curated collection of the top 35 nightmare quotes, exploring the eloquence with which writers, thinkers, and dreamers have captured the essence of these unsettling dreams. Join us as we venture into the eerie and evocative world of nightmarish imagination.

1. “I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” - John Lennon

2. “Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'Something in my expression stops him.'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece.” - Suzanne Collins

3. “Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever. ” - Aleksandar Hemon

4. “Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul.” - Dave Pelzer

5. “You never know. Maybe when we’re dreaming…we’re more lucid than when we are awake.” - Katherine Angela Yeboah

6. “I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.” - Mark Z. Danielewski

7. “A nightmare might force you awakened. The tough life might force you awakened.” - Toba Beta

8. “You learned to run from what you feel, and that's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control.” - Megan Chance

9. “Fucking nightmares.My heart starts to slow down. Glancing down at the floor, I see Tybalt, who is glaring at me with a puffed-up tail. I wonder if he had been sleeping on my chest and I catapulted him off when I woke up. I don't remember, but I wish that I did, because it would've been hilarious.” - Kendare Blake

10. “Mary awoke from her nightmare with a pounding heart, convinced that she had only imagined Elizabeth's cruel plot. A full moon was shining into her chamber, illuminating everything around her in silvery light. That was when she noticed for the first time that there were bars on her window.” - Margaret George

11. “The little girl’s face was from Will’s vilest nightmares. Cavernous mouth, distended chin, bastardized nose. The enormous, bulging eyes glared at Will, demanded he see the truth, commanded him to acknowledge his sin.” - Kevin Wallis

12. “Then stop trying to throw logic at nightmares. Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they're real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster. ~Bibiana to Anita” - Laurell K. Hamilton

13. “Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.” - Bram Stoker

14. “There are many who don't wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don't wish to wake for the same fear.” - Richelle Goodrich

15. “Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically -- any way you want to look at it -- everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.” - Michael Connelly

16. “It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams.” - Karen Blixen

17. “It is the earliest dream that I can remember, earlier than the witch at the corner of the nursery passage, this dream of something outside that has got to come in. The witch, like the masked dancers, has form, but this is simply power, a force exerted on a door, an influence that drifted after me upstairs and pressed against windows.” - Graham Greene

18. “Those heart-hammering nightmares that start to lose coherence even as you're waking up from them, but that still manage to leave their moldering fingerprints all across your day.” - Mike Carey

19. “My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone.” - Suzanne Collins

20. “It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep."We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took us clear up into the sky. We couldn't fly, but we kept jumping and jumping."Sometimes we stayed in the sky a little while, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the moon would get closer and closer and bigger and bigger, and its face would change and get horrible and grin at us until it seemed like its mouth was a mile wide and open, to swallow us up. And then we'd come down again and jump from one cliff to another, and the sea would be roaring down under us, and the waves all grey and cold and moving around and boiling like they were mad or afraid."We went all over the island and sometimes we jumped over the sea to the mainland and back again; and sometimes I tried to get away and run back to Mother - I thought she'd know me even if I was a bunny - but always, whichever way I turned, the hare was there in front of me, and his teeth were shining."We kept it up all night, and I was so tired and cold and miserable, and so scared. I didn't know whether he would ever let me go home or whether he would take me to Aunt Sarai. Then finally I did get away and the hare chased me!"She broke off, her voice rising again to a wail."It was so awful! I ran all over the island, into all sorts of queer little places that I never knew were there before - it seems so different after dark - and finally, when two or three times I'd been so tired that I thought I just couldn't go any farther, before he caught me, I saw the house in front of me and the front door still open and I started to run in, and then I thought - what if they'd planned it that way, and Aunt Sarai had come down from her portrait and was inside there in the dark, waiting for me?” - Evangeline Walton

21. “I will give them nightmares to haunt their dreams long after I'm gone.” - Laini Taylor

22. “People like that don't need a reason apart from "because I can". They have a nightmare and try to make it happen.” - Terry Pratchett

23. “Maldonado's face was ghastly. 'That' she said, pointing below the bed where the cat lurked, 'and that' - pointing to what lay on the floor - 'prove it was no dream. Do dreams leave marks behind them?' ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")” - Cornell Woolrich

24. “I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all.       I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei.       Plague carrier.       Living death.       Drainer of life.       The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could.       Vampire.        And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death.” - Melika Dannese Lux

25. “Harder than waking from a nightmare was trying to wake herself into one.” - Nathan Englander

26. “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere - Carl Sagan” - T.S. Garp

27. “Through the night we drove in a tangle of waking and sleeping, nightmares from hell and holy white dreams.” - Glenda Millard

28. “I woke with sweat beading across my forehead and my hands balled into fists clutching the sheet over my eyes. The dreams. They were back. Haunting me relentlessly. I thought they were gone... I should've known better. (Rayne)” - Kimberly Brockman

29. “Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood.” - Jim Butcher

30. “Suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and slips into nightmares again. Graveyards rising out of the ocean. Her friends’ corpses in the light of their burning school. Skeletons ripping open men's chests and crawling inside. She endures it patiently, waiting for the horror film to end and the theater to go dark, those precious few hours of blackout that are her only respite.” - Isaac Marion

31. “I'm suddenly finding it hard to know the difference between nightmares and consciousness.” - Lauren DeStefano

32. “What about nightmares? Have you experienced sexual dreams of a dark nature?” - S.M. Reine

33. “Plans never go as planned, ever; that’s just how life is. People spend way too much time dreaming about a future they should be having more nightmares warning them against. But that doesn't mean you should let those bad dreams scare you away; all those nightmares want is respect. If you give them that, they’ll give you the space you need. Unless, of course, they’re the type of nightmares that have an appetite, then you’re fucked.” - Dave Matthes

34. “He smelled like alcohol and a bad dream.” - Nenia Campbell

35. “In the dark behind the glare of the television, like a mannequin behind it, I could see a silhouette and it wasn’t moving. It was maybe six foot high with its shoulders hunched and I blinked to make sure it was real. The TV fuzzed grey and white and black and I had a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow away. “Rory” I whispered. Clawing out gently beneath the duvet cover, reaching for his hand. But I couldn’t find it. And he didn’t answer.” - Kate Chisman