Quotes about time
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“Follow me,' Myrnin said. 'And do stay together. And by the way, this is the last time I go anywhere with you people. You are all insane.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

People, Way

“James Dean was the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Beauty, Soul

“She looked as if she were a vampire about to check the time—with a sundial.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Shadow's Claim

“How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Pain

“She couldn't remember the last time she hugged someone, really hugged someone.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

“Tennis taught me so many lessons in life. One of the things it taught me is that every ball that comes to me, I have to make a decision. I have to accept responsibility for the consequences every time I hit a ball.”

Billie Jean King (1943) American tennis player

Life, Decision

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Wisdom, Books, Learning, Reading

“Next time I fall in love it's going to be with someone who isn't an expert in fibbing."
"You're in love with me?"
"You didn't know that?"
"I did, but it's nice to hear."
"Scares the hell out of me.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Smokin' Seventeen

Love, Hell

“Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“I hear that you were on a date with Trouble Kelp. Are you two planning on building a bivouac any time soon?”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

“The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 39

Learning

“My son Asclepius had become the god of medicine by the time he was fifteen, and I couldn’t have been happier for him. It left me time for my other interests. Besides, it’s every god’s dream to have a child who grows up to be a doctor.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

God, Dreams

“It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Chance

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God

Feeling, Personality

“I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point?”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Success

“I dont think that we're meant to understand it all the time. I think that sometimes we just have to have faith.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Faith, Understanding, Thinking

“… only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Way, Sense

“Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Source: Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt

Love, Dreams, Silence, Forgetting

“I'm learning all the time."
"Well, you're a scholar.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Learning

“I didn't go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between two places”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Variant: Time is the longest distance between two places.
Source: The Glass Menagerie

“We are all migrants through time.”

Mohsin Hamid book Exit West

Source: Exit West

“Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

Courage

“Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Life, People

“There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character… Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

People, Change

“Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that's how I felt about drawing.”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

Love, Drawing

“Love is quite violent. It is so painful at times, so devastating. And there is nothing worse or better. We find the highs and lows equally unbearable. But then again, the absence of them is more so.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Love, Pain

“Do you work for the government, any government?”
"I pay taxes, which means I work for the government, part of the time. Yes.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Source: My Name is Legion

Parting

“She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“That life isn't fair?" Yeah, that, of course. But I also learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief… lessens.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Tim Wheddon, Chapter 20, p. 265
Variant: ... I learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief... lessens. It may not ever go away completely, but after a while it's not overwhelming.
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

Life, Learning

“Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

“For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Composition as Explanation (1926)
Context: For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.
Context: No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.

“Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Forgetting

“I would really like to know", he said with genuine curiosity. "The next time I kill someone, I'd like to do it in a way that doesn't freak you out.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Way

“How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do"
"Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Busman's Honeymoon

Source: Busman's Honeymoon

“Everybody sounds stoned, because they're e-mailing people the whole time they're talking to you.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

People

“The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

“It may help us, in those times of trouble, to remember that love is not only about relationship, it is also an affair of the soul.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Source: Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Love, Soul, Help

“Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Quoted on the web sans source. Not in the complete Poems. A 2006 self-help book attributes it verbatim to Dave Sim (see below) sans source. A 2009 reprint of Poems: Second Series mentions it in the introduction sans source (thus probably taking it from the unsourced web quote). No earlier attributions found.
Compare to a quote sourced to Dave Sim: "Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon." (Cerebus #65, 1984)
Misattributed

“What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how; instruct them how the mind of man becomes a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells…”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Source: Lyrical Ballads

Love, Beauty

“I love you all. But it's time to say good-bye, for now.
be careful with the world, or the next time we meet, it might get ugly.
-Tally Youngblood”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

Love, World

“He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

Nature, Parting

“I turned and bumped my head against his chest a few times. It was the nearest hard surface.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really gets resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Life

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Sadness

“Michael had to pound me a couple of times to convince me not to go stage a rescue." Shane shrugged. "He hits like a girl, for a vampire.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Girl

“I'll never forget my first time with you' Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. 'The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.”

Jennifer Crusie book Bet Me

Source: Bet Me

Forgetting

“Early on, he'd learned to enjoy simple things, things that couldn't be bought, and he had a hard time understanding people who felt otherwise.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

People, Understanding, Learning

“It’s okay,” said Alec. “I once walked in on you and Isabelle. I guess turnabout’s fair play.” He frowned. “Although you two were in my room at the time, so actually I think you still owe me.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Thinking

“I thought about the days i had handed over to a bottle.. the nights i can't remember.. the mornings i slept thru.. all the time spent running from myself.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Night

“Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time,… some lies can be true,… broken faith may be restored.”

Joanne Harris book Blackberry Wine

Source: Blackberry Wine

Faith

“Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

“Don't you hear it? She asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Music, Dance

“It’s the first time I’ve ever kissed a boy, which should make some sort of impression I guess, but all I can register is how unnaturally hot his lips are from the fever.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Boy, Kiss

“She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Love, Decision, Heart, Country

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw

Pain, Parting

“I don't know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“There was a time I thought I was a ferret.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States

Law

“She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn’t have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Variant: She was desperate and she was choosey
at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what
she imagined herself to be.
Source: Factotum

Beauty, Way, Imagination