Quotes about time
page 57

“Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Reading, Personality

“Done time in the lock-up, done time on the streets. Done time on the upswing, and time in defeat. I know what I'm askin'. I know it's a lot. Just to say that I love you. Believe it or not.”

Jerry Garcia (1942–1995) American musician and member of the Grateful Dead

Love

“Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us — by taking everything.”

Sarah Manguso (1974) writer, poet

Source: Ongoingness: The End of a Diary

“Sometimes,' Jem said, 'our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It's those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Thinking, Change, Heart

“How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Learning

“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

“Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Juan Muraña", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

Money, Way

“A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life

“Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others—that is too high a price to pay.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Peaceful, Peace

“We meet the people we’re supposed to when the time is just right.”

Alyson Nöel book Shadowland

Source: Shadowland

People

“After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

People, World, Heart

“The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.”

Joe Girard (1928–2019) American salesman

For Team, Success

“The first time Calypso came to check on [Leo], it was to complain about the noise.
“Smoke and fire,” she said. “Clanging on metal all day long. You’re scaring away the birds!”
“Oh, no, not the birds!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Bird

“There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

“Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Love, Kiss

“And nobody had told them that they were short on time.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

“There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

People

“But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Waiting

“Hatori: "That being said, Yuki… when did you become a woman?"

Yuki: "How dare you say that after you've seen me naked so many times…”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 2

“I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Love

“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Men, Lie

“You need something to open up a new door, to show you something you seen before but overlooked a hundred times or more”

Bob Dylan book Writings and Drawings

Source: Writings and Drawings

“The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. “You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Effort

“Time was something that moved in fits and starts for Magnus, dissipating like mist or dragging like chains, but when Alec was here, Magnus’s time seemed to fall into an easy rhythm with Alec’s, like two heartbeats falling into sync.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

No known citation to Marx. First appears unattributed in mid-1960s logic/computing texts as an example of the difficulty of machine parsing of ambiguous statements. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?client=firefox-a&lr=&as_brr=0&q=%22fruit-flies%22+%22time+flies%22+banana&btnG=Search+Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1970. The Yale Book of Quotations dates the attribution to Marx to a 9 July 1982 net.jokes post on Usenet. <br class="br">Misattributed

Birthday

“The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.”

Thomas Ligotti book Songs of a Dead Dreamer

Source: Songs of a Dead Dreamer

World

“No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept re-forming like large evil dust bunnies.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Evil

“Our nemesis is time, against which we have a single ally, memory, and even it betrays us.”

Sam Tanenhaus (1955) American writer

Source: Literature Unbound

Memory

“You know, if you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything, wouldn't you, at any time? And you would achieve nothing!”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for Press Association (3 May 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107427 <br class="br">Third term as Prime Minister

“I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over a million times daily--choosing love, then choosing it again… how loving and being in love could be so different.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

Love

“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”

Frank O'Hara book Meditations in an Emergency (book)

Source: Meditations in an Emergency

Change

“Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Death

“You are a cynical man, Mr. Pleasant."
"We live in cynical times, Miss Cain.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

“But I intend to enjoy the weeks I have left with you to the fullest. Because I know from my study of the philosophy of time, whatever is going to happen in the future is already unavoidable.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

Study, Future

“I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Feeling, Thinking

“people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Way

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend. Trust is built one single moment at a time.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Wisdom

“For those who are poor in happiness, each time is a first time; happiness never becomes a habit.”

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

Source: My Story

Happiness

“We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love

“Your typical suburban mom worries all the time, but she worries about the wrong things”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

Moms

“Now is a time for change, a time to become the greatest version of yourself. And a time to to make your grandest vision of the world.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

World, Change

“Kat felt her heart beat faster, adrenaline pumping through her veins, and she knew he was right. She studied him for a long time. "Do you believe in curses, Hale?"

He looked at her. "I believe in you.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Study, Heart

“When was the last time you did something for the first time?”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

“Do you know, every time I've seen you you've been like the Grim Reaper of goodwill and cheer. You should find another profession.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Maverick

“Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens — but maybe if it’s how you see them, that’s how they really are. It’s like the whole tree falling in the forest thing.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

People, Beauty, Tree

“Out here, it's better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you're dead.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Across the Great Barrier

Dead

“Just reflecting on the fact that when the Universe punches you in the teeth, it never just lets you fall down. It kicks you in the ribs a couple of times and dumps mud on your head.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Universe

“A promise is a commitment to do something later, and a vow is a binding commitment to begin doing something now and to continue to do it for the duration of the vow. Some vows, or contracts, are for life; others are for limited periods of time.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Life

“It takes no more time to see the good side of life than to see the bad.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Life

“I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I feel used.”

Marsha Norman 'night, Mother

Source: 'night, Mother

Sadness, Feeling, Thinking, Hurt

“You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Life is Elsewhere

Thinking, Past

“Something always happens. You still have to promise stuff anyway. If you have to work to make the promises true… it's like a spell. You have to say the words every time you want the results.”

Diane Duane book High Wizardry

Source: High Wizardry

“It is in the dark times that the light of friendship shines brightest.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Walk

Friendship, Light

“He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“If you try to turn me against Lissa one more time the stories are going to be about you bleeding because I'll have ripped your throat out!”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

“Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Training

“Life isn't worth living if you're scared all the time.
-Jordan”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Burned

Life

“The real worth of a person came from how he acted during the bad times. (John Fiske)”

David Baldacci book The Simple Truth

Source: The Simple Truth

Personality

“He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

Lie, Forgetting

“Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Thinking

“Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Democracy

“Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Wisdom is the science of happiness.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Love, Wisdom, Justice, Way

“I lived for those moments when we were together, those few times in my life that I actually felt alive.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Keys to the Repository

Life

“He looks down at his legs as if noticing his outfit for the first time. Then he whips off his hospital gown, leaving him in just his underwear. "Why? Do you find this" - he strikes a ridiculously provocative pose - "distracting?”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“The thing to do when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.”

Booker T. Washington book Up from Slavery

Source: Up from Slavery

Feeling

“Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.”

Elizabeth Kolbert (1961) journalist and author

Source: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Imagination, Nature

“I owe her everything and I love her and I tell her these days, although every time I say it, it gets a little diluted. I think you run out of I love yous.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Love, Thinking

“You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Variant: You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Way, Personality

“Standing on the fringes of life… offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Life, Dance

“live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested… Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)
Context: Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish — a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow — to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested...
Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

Love, Drink, Sleep

“Percy looked at his friends. "I'm getting tired of this guy's shirt."
"Combat time?" Piper grabbed her horn of plenty.
"I hate wonder bread," Jason said.
Together, they charged.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hate, Guy

“That should have been my strategy! By the time I’ve worked through the emotions of surprise, admiration, anger, jealousy, and frustration, I’m watching that reddish mane of hair disappear into the trees well out of shooting range.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Jealousy, Tree, Anger