Quotes about time
page 61

“You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you're going to hit some sort of bottom, but I'm here to tell you: There is no bottom.”

Dan Chaon (1964) American writer

Source: Among the Missing

“I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.”

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

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

1950 entry, quoted in Kate Moses, "The Real Sylvia Plath," Salon.com (2000-06-01) http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2000/06/01/plath2/ <br class="br">The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) <br class="br">Variant: If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time. <br class="br">Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sex, Thinking, Tear

“All I can say is, she's the one I think about. All the time. She's the voice I want to hear. She's the face I hope to see. - Sam Roxton”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

“Which of us is not saying to himself
which of us has not been saying to himself all
his life:
"
I shall alter that when I have a little
more time"?
We never shall have any more time. We
have, and we have always had, all the time
there is.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Source: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

“Why do you keep looking back there?" the guy in charge had asked.
"From time to time I need an antidote," Eddie said.
"From what?"
"Your face.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

“I don’t want to die,” A. J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“But isn't it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?”

Tony Campolo (1935) American sociologist

Source: Red Letter Christians: A Christian's Guide to Faith and Politics, a Citizen's Guide to Faith and Politics

“Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“We were once getting married. And I have loved you all this time- a century and a half. -Jem”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

“I didn’t want to be prideful anymore. I wanted to be as hard as and brittle as the stones I carted into the woods. Stones that could not feel or cry or see. I wished not to feel anything at all.

In no time, what I wished for, I became.”

Alice Hoffman book Green Angel

Source: Green Angel

“We are always in a hurry to be happy…; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Suffering, Happiness

“No one knows better than I do how far heaven is, but I also know all the shortcuts. The secret is to die, when you want to, and not when He proposes. Or else to force Him to take you before your time.”

Juan Rulfo book Pedro Páramo

Source: Pedro Páramo

“My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn't that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends?”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Heart, Hurt

“I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

“Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about :…”

Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe

Source: Robinson Crusoe

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Silence, Betrayal

“One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Circle of Quiet

“One can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the sorrow with each, and not betray any of them.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love, People, Feeling

“And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

“We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.”

Milan Kundera book The Festival of Insignificance

Source: The Festival of Insignificance

“Dudes," He said, "Do not follow other dudes to the bathroom."

Isabelle sighed. "Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“Let me go.”
“I can’t”, he said hoarsely, (…)” I’ve tried a hundred times to let you go, Victoria, but I can’t.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Once and Always

“This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Time is the school in which we learn”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

School, Learning

“That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods

“Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Heartbreaking, Powerful, Loss

“… why I like timetables, because they make sure I don't get lost in time.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

“It's strange the times people choose to be generous.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

“Morality, too, is a question of time.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea is Space.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

History, Idea, Nature

“Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Feeling, Thinking

“We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

“And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Wisdom, Truth, Sincerity

“Write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, read at night, and spend the rest of your time exercising your diplomacy, stealth, and charm.”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

Exercises, Reading, Night

“Time passes. Horror does not.”

Alan Dean Foster book Aliens

Aliens: The Official Movie Novelization

“There is a time for hello and a time for good-bye. It's why the act of burying thing seems natural, but the act of digging them up does not.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

“I could make him mine. But I don't want him. I want someone else. It feels strange to have spent so much time wishing for something, for someone, and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.”

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

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“Yeah, don't you take a break?'
'I don't have time for breaks.'
'That's the whole point of a break. When you've got no time, you need a break.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

Source: Does My Head Look Big In This?

“A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Knowledge, Change, Personality

“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Hope, Music, Way, Feeling

“Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

“Dude, the bush is ready. Why you still beating around it?”
“I’ve lived a long time, kid, and I’ve never heard anyone mutilate the English language quite like you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

“It’s not easy remembering the good times.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: How to Fall in Love

“It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.”

Lois Lowry book A Summer to Die

Source: A Summer to Die

Understanding, Cry

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

Source: Shampoo Planet

“Do you remember what I told you that first time at Taki's? About faerie food?"
"I remember you said you ran down Madison Avenue naked with antlers on your head", said Clary, blinking silver drops off her lashes.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

“… a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“The only time people turned to watch her go by was when she hurtled past them as she fell.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Life, Truth, Home, Solitude

“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”

Howard Nemerov (1920–1991) Poet

“Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 19 (p. 109)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Money, People, Way

“That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“Time is just memory
Mixed in with Desire.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

“And before you ask, no, you're not driving, Myrnin. I remember the last time.'
'That accident was not my fault.'
'You were the only one on the road, and the mailbox actually didn't leap out in front of you. No arguments. You sit in the back, too.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time - but even on the best day nobody's perfect.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

People, Change, Perfection

“You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

People, Democracy, Idea, Reality

“Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

“It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

“Sitting with her on Sunday evening — a wet Sunday evening — the very time of all others when if a friend is at hand the heart must be opened, and every thing told…”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: “We don’t serve colored people here.” I said: “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.””

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Nigger: An Autobiography (1964)

“He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. ''For you a thousand times over!'' he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Pleasure, Forgetting

“Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

“If you asked me to marry you all over again today I'd say yes, said Valentine.

And if I had only met you for the first time today, I'd ask.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

“P. S. You'll have to meet with Dan's principal when you get back. He got in trouble for doing ninja moves in class. Don't worry. This happens all the time.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: The Black Book of Buried Secrets

“We're all snatching precious moments from the peaceful jaws of time.”

Cressida Cowell (1966) British writer

“Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"Dead Man Sings," published in Forbes ASAP, November 30, 1998.
Source: Distrust That Particular Flavor

Forgetting, Nature, Memory

“Love is Love no matter old you are, and I knew if I gave you enough time, you'd come back to me.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

“It will take time to restore chaos”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

“No artist is ahead of his time. He is the time. It is just that others are behind the time.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

“You must try to forget all you have learned,' said the old man. 'You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

Source: Winesburg, Ohio

Dreams, Learning, Forgetting

“It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

“She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You couldn’t imagine it, and then it happened and you couldn’t really imagine it hadn’t.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

Life, Imagination

“She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.”

Jane Austen book Love and Freindship

Source: Love and Friendship

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread on top of it. It was the best time of her life.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Love, Life, Feeling, Laughter

“There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Death, Change, Despair

“Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

“The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

“The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water…. The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water….”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

“What it must feel like, I thought, to look at something, anything really, and know that it’s for the last time?”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

“Emily: YOU CAN'T SPEAK AND TYPE AT THE SAME TIME, BINDY!

Bindy: Watch me.”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

“There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

Source: The Laugh of the Medusa

“Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“I make lots of mistakes. I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times.”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

“I should like to freeze in time all those I do love… Rather like flowers pressed between the pages of a book!”

Sharon Kay Penman (1945) American historical novelist

Love, Books, Flowers

“Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?”

Megan Abbott book The Fever

Source: The Fever

“I've been going a long time now
along the way I've learned some things.

You have to make the good times yourself
take the little times and make them into big times
and save the times that are all right
for the ones that aren't so good.”

Rod McKuen (1933–2015) American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer

Source: Listen to the Warm

“Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him.
Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author