Quotes about time
page 38

“Between hell now, and hell later, Sassenach," he said, his speech measured and precise, "I will take later, every time.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Hell

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Indifference, Forgetting

“The way Leo figured it, he spent more time crashing than he did flying. If there was a rewards card for frequent crashers, he'd be, like, double platinum level.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Way, Flying

“The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Thinking

“It made perfect sense, and at the same time nothing seemed to.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Variant: It all made perfect sense, and at the same time, nothing seemed to make sense at all.
Source: A Walk to Remember

Sense, Perfection

“But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

World

“My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Dreams, Sleep

“If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Source: Gregor the Overlander

“bringing up children was]like living with a bunch of drunks… you really have to be on your toes all the time.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Children

“Because we don't have much time together, I will give you as much love in a year as I could give you in a lifetime.”

Amélie Nothomb Métaphysique des tubes

Source: Métaphysique des tubes

Love

“Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.”

Orson Scott Card book Empire

Source: Empire

Behavior, Parent

“For the time being
Words scatter
Are they fallen leaves?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

“I don't care what your nose says! The last time you smelled half-blood, it turned out to be a meatloaf sandwich!"
"Meatloaf sandwiches are good! But this is a half-blood scent, I swear. They are on board!"
"Bah, your brain isn't on board!”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

People, Dreams

“Anyone can live in a house, but homes are created with patience, time and love.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: The Beach House

Love, Home, Housing, Patience

“Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Love

“The future is now. It's time to grow up and be strong. Tomorrow may well be too late.”

Neil LaBute (1963) Film director, playwright, screenwriter

Source: Reasons to Be Pretty

Strong, Future

“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

World, Understanding, Waiting

“Dreams have a hard time surviving when confronted with reality.”

Mathias Malzieu (1974) French singer

Dreams, Reality

“That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

1
Variant: It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Way, Learning, Past

“Time can tick when there is no clock.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

“As if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. Since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: And now I'm looking at you, he said, and you're asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything ever has.
Source: City of Glass

Love

“If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Singing, Dance

“Say your name over two hundred times and discover you are no one.”

Stephen King The Running Man

Source: The Running Man

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

“Your going to come across people in your life that say all the right things at the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. it's actions, not words, that matter.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Rescue

Variant: You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter.
Source: The Rescue

Life, People

“That is what love is I thought. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Variant: That is what love is. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making, over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.
Source: Golden: A Retelling of Rapunzel

Love

“If you don't take the time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

“Now, for the first time, he's seeing that there really is a way out of this, and it's all so simple. You don't have to run away. You just meet somebody special and step sideways into a parallel universe.”

Irvine Welsh book Skagboys

Source: Skagboys

Way, Universe

“The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Star, Past

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

“It wasn’t a gun wound. I just fell. (Zarek)
No offense, but you’d have to fall of Mount Everest to have those kinds of wounds. (Astrid)
Yeah, maybe next time I’ll remember to take my climbing gear with me. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

“There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Life, People, Problem

“I can see time," whispered Mogget, so softly that his words were lost.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Sabriel

“People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they're not. - Lara Jean”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Variant: People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they’re not. There’s no telling how long you will have them near.
Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Life, People, World

“For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

Source: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World

Forgetting

“The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

“By the time Alec came back into the training room, Jace was lying on the floor, envisioning lines of dancing girls in an effort to ignore the pain in his wrists. It wasn’t working.
~pg. 317~”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Pain, Girl, Lying, Effort

“You can't just be reading books all the time and leave the writting of them to others.”

Joseph Delaney (1945) British writer

Source: Night of the Soul Stealer

Books, Reading

“"You disappear so completely into your head sometimes. I wish I could follow you."
You do. You live in my head all the time.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Jace and Clary, pg. 354
Variant: You disappear so completely into your head sometimes," he said. "I wish I could follow you.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“Time is the enemy of identity”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

Source: The 13 Clocks

Angels

“For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?”

Michael Pollan book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Source: Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Love, People, Selfishness

“I’m an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 135, “Taglios: The Mad Season” (p. 747)

“There’s nothing worse than falling in love with a person over and over every time you lay eyes on them, especially when you hate their goddamn guts”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Love, Hate, Personality

“Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Variant: No, he is not tactful, yet have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet, at the same time, beautiful?
Source: A Room with a View

People, Beauty

“D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms-my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Pain, Lie

“Here's another piece of advice, only date people who have read a different set of books than you have read, it will save you lots of time in the library.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

People, Books, Reading

“White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul
You live again in time, slender and silent.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Soul, Bee

“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Painting

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people, some of the time, but you can fool yourself anytime you need to badly enough.”

Hilari Bell book Navohar

Source: Navohar

People, Fools

“The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children
Variant: The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.

Life

“Every time you love someone, you put not just
your faith in them, but your faith in everything
to the test.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Love, Faith

“My brief flash of relief and confidence melted away. Good thing it did, too. I'm sure the world would come to an end if I were allowed to feel a sense of relief and well-being for any length of time.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

World, Feeling, Confidence, Sense

“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

Sad, Depressing, Hurtful, People

“That if desperate times call for desperate measures, then I'm free to act as desperately as I wish.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“it's back to school time. or as home-schoolers call it, stay-where-you-are time.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

School, Home

“I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

If 6 Was 9
Song lyrics, Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
Source: Jimi Hendrix - Axis: Bold as Love

Life, Way

“But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Suicide, Dead

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“you will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf
know you could tumble at any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

--The Art of Disappearing”

Naomi Shihab Nye (1952) American writer

Source: Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets

Art, Feeling

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Quoted in The Sunday Times Magazine, London (16 September 1973).
1970s
Variant: Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

“I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Source: Girlfriend in a Coma

Life, Youth, Feeling

“I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Fight

“Lei had recently discovered how to change the display, like the Times Square JumboTron, so now the banner read: Merry Christmas! All your presents belong to Leo!”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Diaries

Variant: Leo had recently discovered how to change the display, like the Times Square JumboTron, so now the banner read: Merry Christmas! All your presents belong to Leo!
Source: The Demigod Diaries

Change, Reading, Christmas

“There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Pleasure, Fear, Way, Problem

“Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Water

“If you stare at the center of the universe, there is coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn't care about us. Time doesn't care about us. That's why we have to care about each other.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Universe

“Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Joy

“There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Reality

“Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life…”

Elizabeth Goudge book Green Dolphin Street

Source: Green Dolphin Street

Life, Bird, Tree

“Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

People, Thinking, Change, Madness

“In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Dedication
Source: Cosmos (1980)

For Wife, Joy

“In difficult times, in dark times, some people shine.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

People

“Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: The Yellow Wall-Paper

“Don't waste your time with fear.. Fear won't keep you safe from being hurt.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Fear, Hurt

“When I first met him, he did not care if a friend did not fit into his world, because at that time his world had not been born yet.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

World

“I just know that any time I undertake a case, I'm apt to run into some kind of a trap.”

Carolyn Keene book The Clue of the Broken Locket

Source: The Clue of the Broken Locket

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"
Yes… the same age you will be if you don't.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

Age, Learning, Painting

“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Feeling

“Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

“She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Heartbreaking, Depressing, Love

“In the sea of grief, there were islands of grace, moments in time when one could remember what was left rather than all that had been lost.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Night Road

Sea

“You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Problem, Silence

“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, in Phase III, Ch. 46.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?

Love, People, Making love, Way

“Well, you've finally got a license to kill. It's about time.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Variant: So they finally gave you the license to kill, about time.
Source: Spirit Bound

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Sadness

“I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I'm afraid I'll stutter.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Sad, Lying, Thinking

“Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Life, Dreams, Sleep

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 37

“He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

“If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 13, p. 166
Variant: conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)
Context: Finding a woman with a sense of humor had been the one piece of advice his father had given him when he'd first begun to get serious about dating, and he finally understood why his dad had considered it important. If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.

Relationship, Music, Laughter