Quotation about worry in the middle of the night

April 12, 2023 3:07 AM

It captures the feeling of how insomnia makes one obsess over tiny things.

I’m trying to a quotation that says something like “In the middle of the night, an undelivered package can take on the seriousness of a heart attack.” I’m phrasing it terribly, it’s much more witty and smart, but it conveys that the stuff we wake up in the might fretting over takes on outsize import in a way it wouldn’t in daylight. I recall it being John Updike or F. Scott Fitzgerald or another American novelist who said it. I’m so foggy on the exact wording that I can’t seem to Google it.

posted by annabellee to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

Best answer: This?:

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack Up
posted by reren at 4:38 AM on April 12, 2023 [41 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you so much! That is it!
posted by annabellee at 6:06 AM on April 12, 2023

And if you feel the need for a visual aid to what happens when our brains won't let us sleep:
are you going to sleep.
posted by Lynsey at 11:17 AM on April 12, 2023 [2 favorites]