It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing. ~Brian W. Aldiss
via quotegarden.com
A unique interpretation, of the idea of the night as a time to think, of the late moments, those moments of absolute clarity without distraction. Though I understand there is importance in sleep, I often wonder what thoughts may be if I close my eyes and not think about it.
Often it is in those late hours, those times of silence throughout the hat that true creativity flows so freely, as a writer, and an explorer of the potential within me I recognize why sometimes I do not sleep. It is simply because, it is in the silence, and the absolute opportunity to truly reflect that sleep seems like a dream in and of itself.
Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away.
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"
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