Connie Willis: Timing

Connie Willis is American science fiction writer. Explore interesting quotes on timing.
Connie Willis: 78   quotes 0   likes

“No," I said finally.
"Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?"
"1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog

Problem , Time

“Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.”

Connie Willis Bellwether

Source: Bellwether (1996), Chapter 4 “Rapids”, Section 1 (p. 140)

Forgiveness , Time

“Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog

Cats , Time

“My physics teacher used to say Diogenes shouldn’t have wasted his time looking for an honest man,” Shirl said, “he should have been looking for somebody who thought for himself.”

Connie Willis Bellwether

Source: Bellwether (1996), Chapter 3 “Tributaries”, Section 4 (p. 127)

Teachers , Time

“I would never save her. I looked at the woman mopping up the tea, and it came to me that I could not save her either. Enola or the cat or any of them, lost here in the endless stairways and cul-de-sacs of time. They were already dead a hundred years, past saving. The past is beyond saving. Surely that was the lesson the history department sent me all this way to learn. Well, fine, I’ve learned it. Can I go home now?”

Connie Willis

Source: Fire Watch (1982), pp. 129-130 in The Nebula Awards 18 edited by Robert Silverberg

Way , Home , History , Cats

“The continuum had somehow managed to correct the incongruity, pairing off lovers like the last act of a Shakespearean comedy, though just how it had managed it wasn’t clear. What was clear was that it had wanted us out of the way while it was doing whatever it was doing. So it had done the time-travel equivalent of locking us in our rooms.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 26 (p. 436)

Way , Travel , Lovers , Time

“It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 18 (p. 318)

People , Universe , Time , Horse

“If they were part of the self-correction (i. e., of the space-time continuum) what did that do to the notion of free will? Or was free will part of the plan as well?”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 28 (p. 479)

Time , Parting