Top 35 Bedtime Quotes

Bedtime rituals for children ease the way to the elsewhere of slumber – teeth brushing and pajamas, the voice of a parent reading, the feel and smell of the old blanket or toy, the nightlight glowing in a corner.

For me, any fiction of nobles and swords necessarily has to be a story of corruption, injustice and savagely violent conflict – because any other treatment is going to have all the heft and realistic honesty of a bedtime fairy tale for five year olds.

For the first three years of his life, my son insisted on hearing ‘Goodnight Moon’ before bedtime. Like most babies, he was not a good sleeper by disposition – but reading seemed to help, and this book specifically became part of his whole wind-down ritual.

My son is 14, and I only have this time with him. True, it’s not like before when I couldn’t explain to a little boy why I can’t read him his bedtime story six nights a week. And he’s even said to me, ‘Mom, if you want to do a show somewhere, you should go.’

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

The great thing about small children is they’re portable, so we take them everywhere, but when it comes to 2015, Zachary’s going to school, and I want to be there to drop him off and pick him up. I don’t want to just be the father who reads them a bedtime story.

Kids don’t eat fast. They take their time; they talk and laugh. Sometimes it’s really annoying, because you’re like, ‘Come on, it’s bedtime!’ But try it: You’ll fill up before you know it, because it takes 20 minutes for your brain to know your stomach is full.

My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, ‘dream on’. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories.

When I was a kid, my father would read Neil Simon plays with me, when I was going to bed, as bedtime stories.

When I’m working, I always read stuff that’s as far away from what I’m working on as possible, so I’ll read American crime fiction at bedtime, or Emily Dickinson.

I was told bedtime stories by my father or my grandmother. Books, I mostly read on my own in bed.

I don’t remember my father reading to me, but I remember him telling me bedtime stories. I got to pick what was in them, and then he’d make them up.

My family fled Iran in October 1978 as a result of the coming revolution when I was two years old. In the early days, my entire family lived together in a very crowded house, where I shared a room with my sister, cousin, and grandmother, and we would all listen to my grandmother tell stories before bedtime.

I don’t ever remember not praying. Bedtime prayers, the rosary, praying for friends, relatives, for the sick and for those who had died. It was a natural part of our lives.

To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I’m telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously.

How can we maximize the benefit of our nightly sleep? Turn off cell phones, computers, televisions, and any other distracting devices before bedtime to establish an atmosphere of calm and restfulness.

Both my daughters are both so unimpressed when they see me on television. I want them to say, ‘Oh, Dad!’ But I say, ‘Who’s that?’ and they say ‘Dad’ with no real interest, even if I’m wearing a long wig and riding on a horse! I think I’ll have to read a ‘CBeebies’ bedtime story instead.

I don’t know how other people perceive the lives of actors, but my life is fairly ordinary. I go to work, I come home, I put my kids to bed. If I’m home in time for dinner, I have dinner, and then it’s bedtime.

All the things that most kids hated, I loved. I loved that things were asked of me and that, much to my surprise, I was able to do them. I loved the 10 o’clock bedtime. I loved the responsibility.

Unfortunately, I suffer from insomnia, so my bedtime is as soon as I start to feel the least bit sleepy.

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative fiction.

Bedtime is truly one of my favorite times.

My bedtime was 8 P.M. But on ‘Cosby’ nights, I got to stay up until 8:30. Real big deal. This is when they could afford to do a completely different title sequence in TV every year. I always looked forward to that. It was like a mini musical at the top of the show. My favorite was the Top Hat fancy version.

We read to our kids at bedtime because we want to have literacy, but what are we doing to make sure kids are equally fascinated by science?

Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.

I used to go to Cold Stone Creamery, get a tub of Butterfinger ice cream, and eat it all before bedtime. And my fingers were permanently stained orange from Cheetos.

I’m nearsighted, in part, because I would read past my bedtime in the dark. I didn’t want my mom to see that I was still awake.

I have a daughter, Hanna, and I never read fairy tales to her. But I did tell her bedtime tales and made up many tales involving ‘Gory the Goblin’ and other creatures that I borrowed from the Grimms’ tales and other tales I knew.

I just used to make up stories for the kids at bedtime and my wife goes, ‘you should start putting that stuff down.’ It’s such a joy to do.

I started to write as a child as soon as I could read, or even before, when my mother read me Beatrix Potter at bedtime. Writing seemed to me to be the only sensible way to live and be happy.

Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children’s bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember.

Men have the influence and power in business and politics. It is the mother who can make the child’s bedtime earlier, take away desserts or ground the child.

So even though ‘Sanditon’ was filmed in Gloucestershire on the coast, which was gorgeous, it meant I could finish work, get home, and do a few bedtime stories.

She was just Ma, and I didn’t grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn’t come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many parents were generally standoffish with their male children and acted as if they were raising a generation of would-be soldiers. I remember some of my friends’ parents who would shake their children’s hands at bedtime.