Quotes about time
page 51

“It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Sadness, Silence

“Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Life

“Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!

Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

Family, Night

“The time will come when you will be forced to make a choice,” Hanalea said. “When that time comes, choose love.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

Love

“So, I want to try to spend more time with Dad."
Abe glanced at Rose."You see that?" He said. "Now that's devotion." She rolled her eyes at him.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

“I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Life, World

“The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Suffering

“Looking back, I guess I used to play-act all the time. For one thing, it meant I could live in a more interesting world than the one around me.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

World

“That’s the last time you’re going to kiss me,” I warned when it ended.
He smiled knowingly, and in his eyes, I could see his own memories of that night. “So you say.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Storm Born

Smile, Kiss, Memory, Night

“… I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity…”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

“This is not a good time, Miss Implant." Roman felt Jean-Luc jabbing him in the back with his walking stick. "Uh, Porky. No, I mean--" Damn, what the hell was her name?”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire

Hell

“Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, 'I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?”

Margaret Maron book Bootlegger's Daughter

Source: Bootlegger's Daughter

Thinking, Universe

“Time is a funny thing. I was always puzzled with the way a single day could stretch itself out to the point of eternity in your mind, all while years melted down into the fraction of a second.”

Gloria Naylor book Mama Day

Source: Mama Day

Way

“He took one look at me and said, ‘Damn, you cleaned up better than I thought you would.’ (Grace)
I worry about the men of your time, Grace. They all seem to be great fools. (Julian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Men, Fools

“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 5

People, World, Sadness, Way

“Time continued to pass - the oldest trick in the world, and maybe the only one that really is magic.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

World

“Sometimes, people can go missing right before our very eyes. Sometimes, people can discover you, even though they've been looking at you the entire time. Sometimes, we lose sight of ourselves when we're not paying enough attention.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

People

“Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Tales of ordinary madness (1967-83)

“If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

“I think only once in your life do you find someone that you say, "Hey, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my time on this earth with." And if you miss it, or walk away from it, or even maybe, blink - it's gone.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: If You Come Softly

Life, Thinking, Personality

“Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Reading

“No matter where I was, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

“Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Reading, Housing

“I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.”

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

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Feeling

“How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.”

Isabel Allende book Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

Source: Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

Truth

“Beware of anyone who tries to please you all the time.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Interpreter of Maladies

Source: Interpreter of Maladies

Winter

“If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

“We tend to think human knowledge as progressive; because we know more and more, our parents and grandparents are back numbers. But a contrary theory is possible - that we simply recognize different things at different times and in different ways.”

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

Way, Knowledge, Thinking, Parent

“Everyone dies. I just choose the time and place for some of them!”

Gaston Leroux (1868–1927) French writer

“The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it… I would discover that it hadn't washed me away.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Feeling

“The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Books

“Once you told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Stupidity, Silence

“By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Universe

“I've wished for things and never really had the chance… It's time to stop dreaming and do something about it. You've got to know what you want, then… go.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Dreams, Chance

“You know you're going to get burned from time to time. It's just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they're about to snap the ball again.”

Michael Connelly book The Fifth Witness

Source: The Fifth Witness

Game, Parting, Forgetting

“I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World

“But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. 'He was the great love of her life, you know.'
Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly. 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

Source: The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

Love, Life, Thinking, Happiness

“What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to find out how things 'really are', when all the time they weren't.”

Hugh Prather (1938–2010) American writer

Source: Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

Life

“No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

“I went for a walk last night and she asked me how long I was going to be gone. I said, 'The whole time.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Night

“Time for bed.” I held my fist out. One by one, my flock stacked theirs on top, and then we headed up into the trees to sleep the sleep of the innocent. Well, okay, maybe not so innocent. But the sleep of the much less guilty than others, for sure.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

Sleep, Tree

“You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Life

“In times of war, the law falls silent.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

War, Law

“So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“Sometimes this fellow's music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Music, Color, Imagination

“I loved him in a way you can really on do the first time around. It's the kind of love that doesn't know better and doesn't want to - it's dizzy and foolish and fierce.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Love, Way

“The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.”

Dean Koontz book One Door Away from Heaven

Source: One Door Away from Heaven

People, World, Heart

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

Elizabeth Strout (1956) American writer

Source: My Name is Lucy Barton

People, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“there was a time when these weren't memories.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Memory

“There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner (2003), Ch. 2
Context: Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.Mine was Baba.His was Amir. My name.Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975—and all that followed—was already laid in those first words (11).

People

“There are memories that time does not erase… Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Memory, Loss

“… Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Hurt

“However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Variant: There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
Source: Infidel

Silence

“And so I wait. I wait for time to heal the pain and raise me to me feet once again - so that I can start a new path, my own path, the one that will make me whole again.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

Source: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II

Pain, Waiting

“One time I actually cleaned out my closet so good I ended up on the cover of Time magazine.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

“this time has finished me.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opes a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space.”

Melvin Burgess (1954) British children's writer

Source: Smack

Personality

“Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention."

[, The Nation, June 18, 2001]”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Shrub Flubs His Dub http://www.thenation.com/article/shrub-flubs-his-dub, May 31, 2001. Retrieved October 24, 2011. <br class="br">Context: The next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please, pay attention.<br>Bush was replaced by his exceedingly Lite Guv Rick Perry, who has really good hair. Governor Goodhair, or the Ken Doll (see, all Texans use nicknames—it's not that odd), is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But the chair of a major House committee says, "Goodhair is much more engaged as governor than Bush was." As the refrain of the country song goes, "O Please, Dear God, Not Another One."

“I don’t want to be
one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so
influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant
memory.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Variant: I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever
Source: Love, Rosie

People, Distant, Memory

“Like a word on a page that you’ve printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign. And you feel scared for a second, like you’ve lost something, even if you’re not sure what it is.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Feeling, Reading

“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”

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

Truth, Thinking, Silence

“What we insistently desire, over time, is what we become.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Powerful

“There is a time in a boy’s life when the sweetness is pounded out of him; and tenderness, and the ability to show what he feels, is gone.”

Norah Vincent (1968) American journalist

Life, Feeling, Boy

“You know, I would date if I could find a man worth shaving my legs for. But most are such a waste of time that I’d rather sit at home and watch reruns of Hee Haw.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Home

“Time folds you in its arms and gives you one last kiss, and then it flattens you out and folds you up and tucks you away until it's time for you to become someone else's past time, and then time folds again.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: The Tent

Kiss, Past

“The man that I named The Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Love, Pain, Truth, Books

“Giving to other people makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad…”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Sadness, Smile, Cars

“The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last fragile moment.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

Past, Future

“[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: The Best American Essays 2007

Stupidity, Feeling, Help

“I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Death

“And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Pain, Pleasure

“I'm fine I said for the 2,467th time this semester. (I know. I was keeping count)”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

“How could you be heartbroken and happy at the same time?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Happiness

“Maybe in the general scheme of things he couldn't find any meaning in life, but on a smaller scale it was okay. Not always, but a lot of the time.”

Etgar Keret (1967) Israeli and polish writer and screenwriter

Source: The Girl on the Fridge

Life

“You know how it is when you're reading a book and falling asleep, you're reading, reading… and all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I'm like that all the time.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Books, Reading

“Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Way

“A woman is a full time job. You have to choose your profession.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

“You won't know until it's over. You won't find me in time.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“Memories were fine, but you couldn't touch them. They were never exactly as the moment had been, & they faded w/ time”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Variant: Memories were fine but you couldn't touch them, smell them or hold them. They were never exactly as the moment was, and they faded with time.

Memory

“It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Heart, Personality

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Life, Reading, Joy

“Next time you think of me like that, say my name when you come. It'll get you off even better.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

Thinking

“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

2010s
Context: Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here’s a list of things in the past that the physicists at the time didn’t understand [and now we do understand] [... ]. If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem.

God

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Lonely on the Mountain (1980); later quoted in A Trail of Memories : The Quotations Of Louis L'Amour (1988) by Angelique L'Amour

Life

“There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Books, Reading, Heart

“All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Game, Tree

“Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Variant: Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.
Source: Nausea

Forgetting

“Back in the time when life was easy, the Internet would have told me what I needed to know. The great thing about the Internet was it didn't care why you were asking.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer (1948) American writer

Source: This World We Live In

Life