100 Restless Insomnia Quotes for When You Can’t Sleep

You’re still awake at this hour?

Maybe these insomnia quotes will help. 

When was the last time you had a full night’s sleep without restlessly tossing and turning half the night away?

If this sounds like you, know that you are not alone.

According to a study done by the University of Pennsylvania, insomnia is a pretty common sleep disorder.

The study concluded with an estimate that 25% of the adult population struggles with insomnia each year. 

Many factors can keep you from sleeping properly.

Factors like anxiety over a big event coming up, being overwhelmed with creative inspiration that comes during the night, or even loneliness can all keep you from getting a proper night’s rest. 

Whatever it is that is keeping you up, take a look at these insomnia quotes to know that you are not alone. 

If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. 

Look through our complete collection of inspirational quotes here.

Insomnia quotes for when you’re up all night

1. “I think the most common cause of insomnia is simple; it’s loneliness.” — Heath Ledger

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2. “You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.” — Pawan Mishra

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3. “A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.” — Charlotte Bronte

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4. “Staring at the blue sky causes insomnia to occur in the human.” — Steven Magee

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5. “The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

6. “Your dreams may seem impossible to someone with insomnia.” —Junnita Jackson

7. “Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep.” — Fran Lebowitz

8. “It’s a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.” — Tracy Chevalier

9. “I’m an insomniac, my mind works the night shift.” — Pete Wentz

10. “Insomnia is my greatest inspiration.” — Jon Stewart

Insomnia quotes for the deep thinkers

11. “Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.” — Jessalyn West

12. “I prefer insomnia to anesthesia.” — Antonio Tabucchi

13. “Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.” — Clifton Fadiman

14. “Only the insomniac looks on with open eyes, like a cadaver who forgot to die.” — Gyula Krúdy

Funny Insomnia quotes

15. “Sleep is such a luxury, which I can’t afford.” — Robin Sikarwar

16. “The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.” — W. C. Fields

17. “His insomnia was so bad; he couldn’t sleep during office hours.” —Arthur Baer

18. “Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night… without the satisfaction.” — Lynn Johnston

19. “Insomnia: A contagious disease often transmitted from babies to parents.” —Shannon Fife

Insomnia quotes about loneliness and fear

20. “The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.” — Patrick DeWitt

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of lonely quotes to help you navigate solitide.

Insomnia quotes for when you can’t sleep

21. “Sleep comes more easily than it returns.” — Victor Hugo

22. “When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep, and you’re never really awake.” — Chuck Palahniuk

23. “The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.” — Poppy Z. Brite

24. “The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.” — Leonard Cohen

25. “Insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company.” — Sabrina Benaim

26. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss

27. “If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.” — Dale Carnegie

28. “Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.” —Emil Cioran

29. “Insomnia is the violence of the night over a man.” —Victor Marie Hugo

30. “Insomnia is the act of pushing through sleep to achieve the art of insane creativity.” — Todd Stocker

31. “I’ve always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.” — David Benioff

32. “Don’t fight with the pillow but lay down your head And kick every worriment out of the bed.” — Edmund Vance Cooke

33. “It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.” —Baltasar Gracian

34. “It appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbors as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.” — F Scott Fitzgerald

35. “I wonder why I don’t go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.” — Sylvia Plath

If you’re enjoying these quotes, read our collection of Sylvia Plath quotes from the iconic poet.

Insightful insomnia quotes

36. “Insomnia is an indication, not a chaos. Its like ache. Youre not going to provide a patient ache medicine without figuring out whats reasoning the pain.” — Judith Owens

37. “Between the midnight and the morning: on a given day, that’s the hardest stretch of time to fill.”― Luis Joaquin M Katigbak

38. “Insomnia is just another word for chit chat with the demons during bedtime.” – Daniel Saint

39. “You can hear it in the midst of the night
While your gaze roams the vast plains on the ceiling.”― Erna Grcic

40. “Insomnia never comes to a man who has to get up exactly at 6’ Clock. Insomnia troubles only those who can sleep any time.” – Elbert Hubbard

41. “I find the nights long, for I sleep but little, and think much.” ― Charles Dickens

42. “Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.” ― Gregory Maguire

43. “Insomnia haunted me like regret.” ― K. Weikel

44. “Physical activity within four hours of bedtime and illness can also cause this type of insomnia.” – Alistair Sinclair

45. “A night full of nightmares is way better than a sleepless one.”― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Thought-provoking insomnia quotes

46. “In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.” – Colette

47. “Anyone who has never experienced insomnia cannot be taken seriously as an individual.” – Simon Brass

48. “Whoever says sleep equals laziness is probably a bitter insomniac.” – Joyce Rachelle

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to check out our collection of laziness quotes that will motivate you to get started.

49. “Insomnia can be a gift. More time for reading, writing and walking. More time to live.” – Luigina Sgarro

50. “Insomnia, then, is not just a state of sleeplessness, a matter of negatives. It involves the active pursuit of sleep. It is a state of longing.” – Marina Benjamin

51. “Insomniacs exaggerate the pleasures of sleep.” – Marty Rubin

52. “Some thoughts are too angry to sleep. They lie awake all night and become obsessions.” – Marty Rubin

53. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.” – Marcel Proust

54. “Sleep deprivation is physically miserable and creatively cathartic, as internal landscapes rise up from their dormant ashes.” – Jaeda DeWalt

55. “Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.” – Catherine O’Hara

More insomnia quotes

56. “I’ve got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts – you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn’t do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.” – D.D. Barant

57. “I only sleep with people I love, which is why I have insomnia.” – Emilie Autumn

58. “That’s the advantage of insomnia. People who go to bed early always complain that the night is too short, but for those of us who stay up all night, it can feel as long as a lifetime. You get a lot done.” – Banana Yoshimoto

59. “I think insomnia is a sign that a person is interesting.” – Avery Sawyer

60. “It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.” – Kim Stanley Robinson

61. “I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I’d practically invented.” – Sarah Dessen

62. “When it becomes really impossible to get away and sleep, then the will to live evaporates of its own accord.” – Louis-Ferdinand Céline

63. “When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.” – Khushwant Singh

64. “Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.” – Hippocrates

65. “Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably.” – Hippocrates

Insomnia quotes for when you’re always sleep-deprived

66. “A stupid man stays awake all night pondering his problems; he’s worn out when morning comes and whatever was, still is.” ― Poems of the Elder Edda

67. “Right now, our model is the culture of exhaustion. We need to be exhausted before we can fall asleep, so we keep pushing and pushing ourselves. But if a society can’t rest, how can it sleep?” ― Patricia Morrisroe

68. “In the January that I turned thirty-five, sleep became a foreign and hostile country. I had never been more than what one might call a refugee in the country of sleep.” ― Sarah Monette

69. “Ralph reflected for a moment on the similarities between loneliness and insomnia — how they were both insidious, cumulative, and divisive, the friends of despair and the enemies of love.” ― Stephen King

70. “Achievement is the best sleep aid pill…” ― Rodolfo Peon

71. “When the sun goes down, the insomniac dreams of having a nightmare, just to get some sleep in this too loud world.” ― Vivian Pham

72. “There is no faith and no hope without sleep.” ― H.D.

73. “Do you know what insomnia is?? It’s you telling yourself you need more time to complete your projects.” ― Shads’

74. “Insomnia can be a gift. More time for reading, writing and walking. More time to live.” ― Luigina Sgarro

75. “I was born in the city that never sleeps so perhaps insomnia is my birthright.” ― Ariel Francisco

76. “I want to sleep but my brain won’t stop talking to itself.” — Unknown

77. “My mind decides to run when normal people sleep.” — Unknown

78. “My eye lids are heavy, but my thoughts are heavier.” — Unknown

79. “Dear Mind, please stop thinking so much at night, I need sleep.” —Unknown

80. “Dear brain, please shut up.” — Unknown

81. “My day starts backwards … I wake up tired and go to bed wide awake.” — Unknown

82. “The best cure for insomnia is a Monday morning.” — Unknown

83. “Error 404 sleep not found.” — Unknown

84. “Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it’s time to get up.” —Unknown

85. “Not being able to sleep because that certain someone is on your mind.” — Unknown

86. “I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.” — Unknown

87. “I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death.” — Unknown

88. “The scary thing about having insomnia is not the hours lost for sleeping but the re-run of thoughts you’ve been trying to forget.” — Unknown

89. “Sleeping is so hard when you can’t stop thinking about someone.” — Unknown

90. “I can’t go to sleep. You will always be on my mind, even if you are not with me.” — Unknown

Thought Provoking Insomnia Quotes To Make You Lie Down

91. “That ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia.” ― James Joyce

92. “Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.” ― Mignon McLaughlin

93. “Unfortunately, I suffer from insomnia, so my bedtime is as soon as I start to feel the least bit sleepy.” ― Cheyenne Jackson

94. “The relegation of insomnia to a secondary condition has dictated treatment practices that are questionable.” ― Colleen E. Carney

95. “Insomnia is only the mind over the mattress.” ― Jane Ace

96. “I’m kind of an insomniac and watch TV late at night.” ― Monica Keena

97. “Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.” ― Charles Simić

98. “I used to think that driving, sleepless, ambitious labor was what you needed to succeed.” ― Charles Kuralt

99. “Living chronically with insomnia can generate considerable anxiety and interfere with the quality of life.” ― Colleen E. Carney

100. “My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I’d never have written a line.” ― Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Feeling sleepy yet?

It’s 2 a.m. in the morning and you need to get up at 6.

If you fall asleep now you can get a solid four hours of sleep in.

That’s more than last night, right?

Do thoughts like these plague you nightly?

If so, don’t let your insomnia win by staying in bed and tossing around all night.

Sometimes, one of the best things you can do when you can’t sleep is to get up.

If you can’t sleep, get out of bed and pour yourself a glass of milk or Sleepy Time Tea.

Take a warm bubble bath and light a sweet-smelling candle to relax your senses.

Or, read a book (bonus points if it’s boring – that will put you right to sleep).

Whatever you do, don’t drink alcohol or stare at electronics as both are known sleep disruptors.

While the University of Pennsylvania’s study showed that 25% of adults experience insomnia, the study also found that 75% recover on their own without developing persistent poor sleep or chronic insomnia. 

Did you enjoy these restless insomnia quotes?

Which quote is your favorite?

Let us know in the comment section below.