Quotes from Marina Benjamin

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.

In insomnia we encounter the very heart of love's darkness: the essential otherness of the beloved.

The question is this: What if waking life is incapable of adequately attuning us to the needs of our unconscious minds?

We can become more perceptive, more in charge of our own reality, as loneliness makes life compelling. Vitally, loneliness assures us that our life is our own.

Like travel, insomnia is an uprooting experience. You are torn out of sleep like a plant from its native soil, then shaken down so that any clinging vestige of slumber falls away, naked confusion exposed like nerve endings. Sleep, in its turn, is a matter of gravity. It pulls you down, beds you in the earth, burrows you in. In sleep you connect back to the bedrock that provides nourishment and restorative rest.