Faith & Spirit Quote by Roy Horn

A prayer that lands like a stage whisper, Roy Horn's "Dear God, let this be just a bad nightmare" captures the instant when spectacle collapses into terror. Horn, half of Siegfried & Roy, built a career on controlled illusion: big cats, bright lights, danger choreographed into family-friendly awe. This line flips that contract. It isn't bravado or a performer "playing hurt". It's a human being reaching for the oldest language we have for helplessness.

The intent is blunt: stop time, reverse the reel, wake me up. But the subtext is sharper because it comes from a man whose job was to make the impossible feel safe. A nightmare is, by definition, unreal yet convincing; that's exactly how magic works. Horn instinctively uses the metaphor of his own craft to process catastrophe, as if his mind can only frame reality through the grammar of illusion.

Context does the heavy lifting. The phrase is widely associated with the 2003 onstage tiger attack that ended their long Las Vegas run and permanently altered Horn's life. In that moment, the myth of mastery over nature--the showman as commander of predators--meets its limit. The line reads as both personal plea and accidental epitaph for an era of entertainment that sold risk without acknowledging its cost.

What makes it work is its smallness. No grand speech, no public-relations varnish, just the raw pivot from performer to mortal. It's the sound of someone realizing there is no trapdoor, no assistant, no applause cue. Only gravity, blood, and a God you address when the act is over.