“[Larkin] himself is well aware that there are happier ways of viewing life. It's just that he is incapable of sharing them, except for fleeting moments - and the fleeting moments do not accumulate, whereas the times in between them do.”

“And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like fireflies
in summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.”

“Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!”

“The day is made up of 24 hours and an infinite number of moments. We need to be aware of those moments and make the most of them regardless of whether we're busy doing something or contemplating life.”

“Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.”

“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. … For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form — it may be called fleeting or eternal — is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”

“So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”

“Leisure moments: each life well regulated has some such intervals, and he who cannot make way for them does not know how to live.”

“Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view.”

“The seconds tick. They always do. The power of an entire sun cannot stop them even for a moment, and so death comes between the moments, like a thief of light in the dark.”