Quotes about timing
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“One time, my mother told me that I always eat like I'll never see food again. And I said, "I won't unless I bring it home." That shut her up.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Food, Home, Time

“He touched her face, gently, with the back of his hand. 'you disappear so completely into your head sometimes.' he said. 'i wish i could follow you.'
you do, she wanted to say, you live in my head all the time”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Time

“Because every time someone finds a new animal, or a new amazing thing on earth, it means we haven't broken everything yet.”

Maria Dahvana Headley (1977) American writer

Source: Magonia

Time, Animals

“Because tanning and steroids are only a problem if you plan to live a long time.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Problem, Time

“The Princess and the Pea?" Gabrielle suggested.

"Not enough time," Kat said

"Where's Waldo?" Gabrielle went on.

"No." Hamish recoiled. "I am still not allowed back in Morocco.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

Time, Princess

“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Pt. V : As Far as Thought Can Reach
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Time

“Human beings are strange creatures. As people come across one another they produce various outcomes. Good things, sometimes. And other times, bad.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 16

People, Time

“Everything people do that doesn’t work has to be somebody else’s fault. Next time you know, geezers’ll be suing the government for getting old and kids’ll be taking their mommies to court because they came out ugly.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

People, Time

“If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.”

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

Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Love, God, Truth, Time

“Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: The Devil's Web

Motivation, Change, Time, Past

“We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, Feeling, Time, Clothes

“Not everyone wants you all the time, Jace," he said.
"Don't be ridiculous.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Time

“Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time.”

Nick Hornby book The Polysyllabic Spree

Source: The Polysyllabic Spree

Books, Art, Time, Box

“The time has come to realize that supersensible knowledge has now to arise from the materialistic grave.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Knowledge, Time

“There were eleven of us.
Each more different than the next.
All with the same mindset.
Things weren't the way they were meant to be.
It was our job to make things right.
We were the soldiers of Halla.
It was time for us to take it back.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Way, Time

“Frank Zhang: lumbering klutz, child of Mars, part-time pachyderm.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Time, Parting

“He puts the chain with the locket around my neck, then rests his hand over the spot where our baby would be. “You’re going to make a great mother, you know,” he says. He kisses me one last time and goes back to Finnick.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Kiss, Time, Baby

“Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in New York World Telegram & Sun (21 August 1960); also in Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion (2004) by Joseph Abboud, p. 79

Beauty, Art, Fashion, Time

“The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“For the first time Valentine glanced down at the body of Brother Jeremiah. "I did kill him, and the rest of the Silent Brothers as well. I had to. They had something I needed."
"What? A sense of decency?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Sense, Time

“I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Time

“Easy there," Zach said when I stumbled into him. "Now's probably not the time to get handsy. You might want to control yourself.”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Time

“I know you feel inhuman, and as if you are set apart, away from life and love, but…"
His voice cracked a little, the first time Tessa had heard him sound unsure.
He cleared his throat. "I promise you, the right man won't care.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Love, Life, Feeling, Time

“You know, the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Variant: The mind is a remarcable thing. Just because you can’t see the wound doesn’t mean it isn’t hurting
Source: The Pact

Time, Hurt

“Don't choose me. I'm not worth your time.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

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

Time

“Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.”

Donald Richie (1924–2013) American writer

Source: A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan

Time

“It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.”

Anna Wintour (1949) English editor-in-chief of American Vogue

Understanding, Time

“I’ve had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower I can’t quite make out what it is. It takes time.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Flowers, Time

“When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Source: When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home

Home, Photo, Time

“There are times when one friend requires the blind faith of another…”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Faith, Time

“I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Love, People, Learning, Time

“I’m so sorry that I wasted your time because you really do mean a lot to me and I hope you have a very nice life because I really think you deserve it. I really do. I hope you do, too. Okay, then. Goodbye.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Life, Hope, Thinking, Time

“They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Death, Way, Time

“Look, did you ask me to come all the way uptown just so you could stare at me like I was something in a petri dish? Next time I'll send you a photo."
"And I'll frame it and put it on my nightstand," said Jace.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Way, Photo, Time

“I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.”

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

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Thinking, Time

“She's thirteen.
Time will remedy that.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Time

“It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

World, Family, Time, Reading

“And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And a hundred visions and revisions”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Time, Indecision

“Time has no meaning in itself unless we choose to give it significance”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Time

“If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself.”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

From Are You the One for Me? (1992)

Love, Time, Personality

“Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.”

Lloyd Alexander book The Black Cauldron

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book III: The Castle of Llyr (1966), Chapter 1
Source: The Black Cauldron

Time

“Well, because sometimes you love someone but they might not be the right
person for you. That takes some time to figure out”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Baby Proof

Love, Time, Personality

“I read the first chapter ofwhen Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life, Universe, Time, Reading

“For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.”

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

Pain, Universe, Time, Indifference

“Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Fear, Way, Time

“I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Time

“I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

People, Way, Thinking, Learning

“If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by,
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Smile, Time, Summer, Flying

“We are changed souls; we don't look at things the same way anymore. For there was a time when we expected the worst. But then the worst happened, did it not? And so we will never be surprised again.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God

Way, Soul, Change, Time

“I been watchin' you, workin day and night, slavin so hard you barely have time to catch your breath. People do that for three reasons. Either they crazy, or stupid, or tryin' to forget.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

People, Stupidity, Time, Night

“Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don’t know, but it’s a world where there’s no time, so space, no frontiers.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

World, Feeling, Time, Parting

“A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

Jim Bouton (1939–2019) American baseball player, writer

Life, Way, Time

“Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.”

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

Time, Past

“What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

People, Feeling, Understanding, Time

“As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn’t matter, I knew that to her it did.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Beauty, Time

“Have you ever noticed how when you're happy, time seems to pass by fast, while when you're miserable it goes real slow? Life would have been a blink with you whether it lasted a millennium or a month.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: A Quick Bite

Life, Happiness, Time

“There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Time

“A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Time, Past

“No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life, People, Time, Past

“Father says it will come in time. “Time heals,” he says.
I don’t tell him that I don’t know what time is.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Time

“For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the Ninth Gate.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Abhorsen (2003), p. 343.

Truth, Star, Time

“Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

Time

“On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Love, Time

“People ask all the time how I'm doing, but the truth is, they don't really want to know.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

People, Truth, Time

“For me, the release was a spot in time with no past and no future. Just the extraordinary simplicity of a moment— the kind of moment that has a funny way of making a person believe that life and love can last forever.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Love, Life, Way, Time

“One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”

André Gide book The Counterfeiters

On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d'abord et longtemps, tout rivage.
Often misquoted as "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."
Frequently misattributed to Christopher Columbus.
Variant: Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Source: Les faux-monnayeurs [The Counterfeiters] (1925)

Time

“The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Time

“what time is it? its is by every star
a different time, and each most falsely true…”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Star, Time, Falseness

“Sometimes the space between knowing what to do and actually doing it is a very short walk. Other times it is an impossible expanse.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Time

“A quarter past three," she exclaimed, catching sight of the bedside clock. "What a time to be drinking tea!"
"Anytime," Harold told her, "is time to be drinking tea.”

Miss Read (1913–2012) English novelist

Drink, Time, Past, Tea

“At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Time

“I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking too, and for the same reason. I don't know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each others arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Time, Cry

“Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog

Cats, Time

“You are the grim, goal-oriented ones who will not believe that the joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Time, Joy

“I have long known that it is part of God’s plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident from the first moment that she was a rarity.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 4 (p. 51)

God, People, Stupidity, Time

“We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it—that makes no sense. What mycould never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Happiness, People, Understanding, Sense

“In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Life, History, Sense, Time

“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

“For some time now she has had the conviction that life is about to change if only because it must….”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Life, Change, Time

“By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Time

“Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will f--- you up, every time.”

Chuck Palahniuk Snuff

Source: Snuff

Time, For Mother

“… every time you lose, you die a little, inside. Not all your organs… maybe just your liver.”

George Allen

Time

“It moves at its own measured pace, for it has no reason to hurry. Tomorrow will come in its own good time.”

Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007) American writer

Source: The Sky is Falling

Time

“No matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Time, Madness

“Live one day at a time. Keep your attention in present time. Have no expectations. Make no judgements. And give up the need to know why things happen as they do. Give it up!”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Source: Why People Don't Heal and How They Can: A Practical Programme for Healing Body, Mind and Spirit

Time

“The police are asking through the bedroom door, why did I make a batch of strawberry daiquiris before I called them?
Because we were out of raspberries.
Because, can't they see, it just does not matter. Time was not of the essence.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Time

“It is my wish that you may have at better and freer life than I have had. Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience; this was what upheld me in time of misery.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Life, Money, Happiness, Children

“The time it takes to feel better about a breakup is directly proportional to the time it takes to feel better about yourself.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy

Feeling, Time

“When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you could n't hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that 's just the place and time that the tide 'll turn.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Old Town Folks

Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 39 (p. 507) Sometimes paraphrased: "When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." and "Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn".
Context: When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you could n't hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that 's just the place and time that the tide 'll turn. Never trust to prayer without using every means in your power, and never use the means without trusting in prayer. Get your evidences of grace by pressing forward to the mark, and not by groping with a lantern after the boundary-lines, — and so, boys, go, and God bless you!

Time