Quotes about time
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“I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

“When you know you love someone, when you know it's finally the right time, you don't just wait around for the right words, you just say the sentences even if they're all mixed up and imperfect.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Coming Up for Air

Love, Waiting

“For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Life, Weather

“Once upon a time, Sleeping Beauty decided to take a nap from which she would never wake up.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: You Know Where to Find Me

Beauty, Sleep

“It was the first time in years I didn’t wonder if my father was out there, looking at it too.”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

“I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Happiness

“Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.”

Diane Ackerman (1948) Author, poet, naturalist

“Haymitch in my head full-time. Horrifying”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Haymitch Abernathy and Katniss (pp. 110-111)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: "This is your earpiece. I will give you exactly one more chance to wear it. If you remove it from your ear again, I'll have you fitted with this." He holds up some sort of metal headgear that I instantly name the head shackle. "It's an alternative audio unit that locks around your skull and under your chin until it's opened with a key. And I'll have the only key. If for some reason you're clever enough to disable it,"—Haymitch dumps the head shackle on the bed and whips out a tiny silver chip—"I'll authorize them to surgically implant this transmitter into your ear so that I may speak to you twenty-four hours a day."
Haymitch in my head full-time. Horrifying. "I'll keep the earpiece in," I mutter.

“There was a time when I liked a good riot. Put on some heavy old street clothes that could stand a bit of sidewalk-scraping, infect myself with something good and contagious, then go out and stamp on some cops. It was great, being nine years old.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Clothes

“Hearts are tough, Most times they don't break. Most times they are only bend”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

Heart

“Time is not the great teacher. Experience is. A man may live a whole life, but if he never leaves his home to experience that life, he dies knowing nothing. A mere child who has suffered and lived can be the wiser of the two.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: Love Bites

Life, Home, Suffering, Teachers

“When we read, it is not ours to absorb all that is written. Our thoughts are jealous and they constantly blank out the thoughts of others, for there is not room enough in us for two scents at one time.”

Milorad Pavić (1929–2009) Serbian writer

Source: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words

Reading

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

World

“it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

“I want to touch you in real time
not find you on YouTube,
I want to walk next to you in the mountains
not friend you on Facebook.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: I am an Emotional Creature

Mountain

“But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.”

Jon Krakauer book Into Thin Air

Source: Into Thin Air

Way

“Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Tender is the Night

Pleasure, Past, Future, Happiness

“Heaven is not a place, and it's not a time. Heaven is being perfect.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Perfection

“It's not time to worry yet”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“I don't like killing a girl," the Spaniard said.
"God does it all the time; if it doesn't bother Him, don't let it worry you.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

God, Girl

“Just one time…. When you know who I am. Let me be your man." ~ JZB”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Variant: When you know who I am. Let me be your man.
Source: Shadowfever

“It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

People

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Beauty, For Parents, People, Beauty

“This is a touch game. There are times when you've got to play hurt when you've got to block out the pain.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Pain, Game, Hurt

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Heartbreaking, Boy, Heart, Cry

“A legend, Kludd, is a story that you begin to feel in your gizzard and then over time it becomes true in your heart. And perhaps makes you become a better owl.”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Capture

Feeling, Heart

“I want you to have big dreams, big goals. I want you to strive to achieve them. But I don't want to see you beating yourself up every time you make a mistake.”

Kelley Armstrong The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Dreams

“The sad truth about humanity… is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

People, Truth, Sadness, Idea

“We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”

Tony Kushner Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Source: Angels in America

Life, Death, Secret, World

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Life, Sun

“Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man of My Dreams

Feeling

“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

World, Effort

“… so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Love, Imagination

“And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Happiness

“There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

God

“Cats are the lap-dancers of the animal world. Soon as you stop shelling out, they move on, find another lap. They're furry little sociopaths. Pretty and slick -- in love with themselves. When's the last time you saw a seeing-eye cat?”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Source: Safe House

Love, World, Cats, Animals

“There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Life

“You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.”

Hilary Mantel book An Experiment in Love

Source: An Experiment in Love

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

Lie, Memory, Heart, Painting

“I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Death, Music

“Were-Hunters are different from humans. (Ravyn)
You mean other than the fact that you live for several hundred years, can turn into animals, time travel, and wave your hand to make freaky stuff happen? (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Travel, Animals

“Only time can heal your broken heart. Just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Heartbreaking, Sad, Heart

“There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

Wallace Stegner book Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

Friendship, Home, Happiness

“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Love, God

“I'll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Sun

“Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Life

“Time will perfect matter.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Perfection

“Mocking a woman is like drinking too much wine. It may be fun for a short time, but the hangover is hell.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Source: Warbreaker

Hell, Drink, Wine

“Because maybe, the best of times were yet to come. You never knew.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Source: Bring Up the Bodies

Thinking, Sport

“[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s
Source: The Irrational Knot (1905)

People

“In a thousand years time this day will have existed for a thousand years to the day. And the ignorance of the whole world about what they've said today will have a date too.”

Marguerite Duras book Blue Eyes, Black Hair

Source: Blue Eyes, Black Hair

World

“I gave him a kick and he stepped back onto the third rail. Exploding, flaming eraser! This is why moms tell you to stay away from the third rail, but it sure came in handy this time.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Moms

“It is just that she was fifteen once for the first time, and Peter walked across her heart and left his footprints there.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Heart

“He taught only one class: 'Unlikely Maths'. But since the time was listed as "now" and the place, "everywhere," this was hardly helpful in tracking him down.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Help

“I cannot stay," he lied for me, eyes averted. "I'm only going to be here for a time, then leave you." His gaze met mine. "And I will cry when I go, because I could love you forever.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Variant: I'm only going to be here for a time, then leave you." His gaze met mine. "And I will cry when I go, because I could love you forever.
Source: Black Magic Sanction

Love, Cry

“If he comes in the dark, then it's KYAG Time!"

- Harkat Mulds (The Lake of Souls)”

Darren Shan book The Lake of Souls

Source: The Lake of Souls

Soul

“Time is how you spend your love.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

Love

“If you were smart, you'd probably spend more time stretching, he said & I said, If I were really smart, I'd probably spend more time just sitting in the shade drinking lemonade.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Drink

“I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

Thinking

“There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Love, Secret

“I gotta go to the bathroom," Emby mumbles.
"You should have thought of that before you left," says Hayden, putting on his best mother voice. "How many times do we have to tell you? Always use the potty before climbing into a shipping crate.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.”

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

Knowledge

“Let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Variant: For everyone and everything, there is a time to die.
Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Abhorsen (2003), p. 343.
Source: Sabriel
Context: For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the Ninth Gate.

“Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

"On Delany the Magician", a foreword to Trouble on Triton (1996) by Samuel R. Delany, and reprinted in Acker's collection Bodies of Work (1996)
Source: Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Context: Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies. Aeneas did. Odysseus did. Listen to Delany, a prophet.

Books, Reading, Dead

“It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Life

“The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, People, Star, Happiness

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

Freedom

“Someday I'd change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.”

Jonathan Lethem Motherless Brooklyn

Source: Motherless Brooklyn

Change

“The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“I hated myself for needing him at such times, for craving his strength whenever I felt upset.”

Kathy Reichs book Déjà Dead

Source: Déjà Dead

Hate

“Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Music, Passion, Clothes

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Happy, Friendship, Missing You, Goodbye

“The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a. m.
She weighs six pounds, ten ounces.
The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?"
And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Girl, Baby

“Time plays tricks between here and home," said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Abhorsen

Life, Home

“Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Life

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Death

“That’s all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out
you can’t follow them all the way to the end.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Way, Thinking

“On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Truth

“You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Kiss

“I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

As quoted in Best New Games (2002) by Dale N. LeFevre, p. 9

“How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Life, Change

“There was a DJ who stayed up for eleven days straight, the longest recorded period of time anyone has ever gone without sleep, and he started playing nothing by Phil Collins, and that's how they knew it was time to call the ambulance.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Sleep

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Variant: We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
Source: Four Quartets