Quotes about spacing
page 4

“I have a system with bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in them. They are sanctuaries, public places of peace spaced throughout the world for people like me.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

People, World, Peace, Time

“All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Hurt

“Her silence was the blank space between the words.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Silence

“We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare.”

Arthur Machen (1863–1947) Welsh author and mystic

Source: The Terror

Life, Dreams, Star, Thinking

“I've been going insane reading my students' papers. Apparently several of them think the Hubble Space Telescope is used to search the universe for hubbles."
~ Ithana Aaronson”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

Search, Thinking, Universe, Reading

“You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.”

Nicholson Baker book The Anthologist

Source: The Anthologist

“Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Science

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.

Way, Appearance, Time

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.”

Salvador Plascencia The People of Paper

Source: The People of Paper

Thinking, Missing You, Good Night

“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”

Orson Scott Card Alvin Journeyman

Source: Alvin Journeyman

Truth, Way

“It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Understanding, Change

“Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep

Question

“Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone.”

George Harrison book I, Me, Mine

Source: I, Me, Mine

“Empty Spaces:
After his father died he carried his life more gently & left an empty space for the birds & other creatures.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Life, Bird

“How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities?… I never feel the four walls around the substance of the self, the core. I feel only space. Illimitable space.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Feeling

“Every single answer starts with the phrase 'I don't know.' But most of the time she does know, if I give her the time and the space in which to answer.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Time

“Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

“But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Spring

“Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Source: Nightwoods

Light, Drawing

“As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

People, Smile, Star, Universe

“Nick, space. Now. (Acheron)
Go, Nick, fetch. Here, boy, here. You should let me borrow one of those leather collars you wear and give me a tag with Kyrian’s number on it. ‘In case of loss, call my owner.’ (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Dream Hunter

Boy, Loss

“Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Simply Magic

Soul

“All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland

“I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don't. Some read; some don't. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make killer chocolate chip pancakes and so all is forgiven.”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Life, People, Reading

“In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Dedication
Source: Cosmos (1980)

Time, Joy, For Wife

“In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Source: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

People, Books, Idea, Reading

“You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

Baby

“Dogs own space and cats own time.”

Nicola Griffith book Hild

Source: Hild

Dogs, Cats, Time

“Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Love

“I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time

“I am still the center sister. But I see it differently now. There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Sister

“And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Love, Silence

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Silence, Time

“But they can't know how the dark space inside me is growing. I lie to them. I can't get out of the dark hole. 'Peace is here' it whispers.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Breathless

Lie, Peace

“It is not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between them.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Variant: It's not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.
Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Madness

“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Nature, Tree, Time

“These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Hope, Summer, Childhood, Flying

“I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”

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

“I had woven a tapestry of obscenity that as far as I know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”

Jean Shepherd (1921–1999) American writer and radio host

Source: A Christmas Story

“Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”

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

Source: The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

“You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, “What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?” Does that ever make you anxious?”

Elaine May (1932) American screenwriter, film director, actress, and comedian

Lie, Law, Thinking, Night

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework — you can still be writing, because you have that space.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

New York Times (27 July 1980)

Cars, Silence

“Don’t lie. You know you like to view but not to buy. I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone’s little home.”

Jeanette Winterson book Gut Symmetries

Source: Gut Symmetries

People, Lie, Home

“I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

Time, Loneliness

“He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: Scandalous Desires

Love, Tear, Heart

“It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

Children, Travel

“He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs…”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, Silence, Loss, Heart

“Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Mathematics, Time

“Incoming!" yelled Poseidon.
They shifted-as much as they could in the cramped space-and Rocky landed in their midst.
"This is not a baby," Hades noticed "I think it's a rock."
He was observant that way.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Way, Thinking, Baby

“I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life

“There is two feet of space between us, and about a mile of separation.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

“… the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

“Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (…) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Imagination, Memory

“I liked Lost in Space,” Stefan said.
“The movie or the TV series?”
“The movie? Right. I had forgotten about the movie,” he said soberly. “It was better that way.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Way

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, Life, Dreams, Country

“When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Drawing

“You're floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience.”

Michael Singer (1945) American landscape architect

Source: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Happiness, Universe

“Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley The Last Man

Source: The Last Man

“And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island (l. 64-67) (1958).

People, Star, Sense

“We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Anger

“Did Belikov bend the rules of time and space to get here so fast? He can do that, right?”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Time

“She wants to drink that man too, and then she can forget forever the cheap wine that you gulp down and that makes you feel drunk, but always leaves you with a headache and an empty space in your soul.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Feeling, Soul, Drink, Wine

“People who prefer e-books… think that books merely take up space. This is true, but so do your children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel.”

Joe Queenan (1950) American writer

Source: One for the Books

Children, People, Books, Thinking

“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Passion

“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Beauty, Peaceful

“Dead girl walking” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secrets” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
"I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Secret, Girl, Boy, Dead

“… the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Variant: The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.
Source: A Fine Balance

Cry

“Men are like dogs," Stacy was fond of saying. And she usually went on to add that, like dogs, they all took up too much space on the bed, and they always went for the crotch.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Men, Dogs

“I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.”

Alex Garland book The Coma

Source: The Coma

“If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“TRYING TO FILL THE empty SPACE

i don't know
if I will
ever understand
this Ache.
Perhaps it is
simpley and completely
Love and

what

HAPPENS.
at the end.

Loss

November 17, early morning”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

Love, Understanding, Loss

“Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm.”

Mark Batterson (1969) American pastor and writer

Source: Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

Home, Parting

“In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books, Universe

“He didn't just occupy space; he saturated it. The room had been full of books before, now it was full of him.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Books

“Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Time

“You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Fear, Waiting

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The World and Other Places: Stories

Chance

“It’s the same thing. Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Passion

“I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.”

Dan Simmons book Endymion

Source: Endymion

Love, Time

“There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity”

Mina Loy (1882–1966) Futurist poet and actress

Source: The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy

Time

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 1: Puget Sound and British Columbia <br class="br">1910s

Beauty, Star, Universe, Appearance

“is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Universe

“Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Music, Time

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

Travel

“I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

World, Waiting

“They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space."
"Oh," the thin beast said. "Aren't they lonely?”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Communication

“Here then - the after math of meaning. A liftime finished between the space of two frames.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Silence

“As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Hope, Way, Imagination

“I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.

It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

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

Time, Waiting, Forgetting

“The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity…”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love, God, Effort, Light

“The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

“Space echoes like an immense tomb, yet the stars still burn. Why does the sun take so long to die?”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 5: "Dead God", p. 60 (original emphasis)
Context: God is nowhere to be found, yet there is still so much light! Light that dazzles and maddens; crisp, ruthless light. Space echoes like an immense tomb, yet the stars still burn. Why does the sun take so long to die? Or the moon retain such fidelity to the Earth? Where is the new darkness? The greatest of all unknowings? Is death itself shy of us?

Star, Sun