Quotes from book
Time and Again

Time and Again
Jack Finney

Time and Again is a 1970 illustrated novel by American writer Jack Finney. The many illustrations in the book are real, though, as explained in an endnote, not all are from the 1882 period in which the actions of the book take place. It had long been rumored that Robert Redford would adapt the book into a movie. The project has never come to fruition. Though a film of this novel has never been made, a 1980 film, Somewhere in Time features a similar time travel technique. It is based on a 1975 Richard Matheson novel called Bid Time Return. The film concerns a young man unhappy with his life as a playwright. He meets a scientist named Dr. Finney whose time travel theory mimics Jack Finney's idea of self-hypnosis in the exact environment of the desired destination time. In July 2012, it was announced that Lionsgate studios optioned the film rights to the novel, with Doug Liman set to direct and produce.

“Have you ever given someone a book you enjoyed enormously, with a feeling of envy because they were about to read it for the first time, an experience you could never have again?”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again

““Sounds impressive. And expensive.”
“Not at all.” Danziger shook his head firmly. “It will cost, all told, only a little over three million dollars, less than the cost of two hours of war, and a better buy.””

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 4 (p. 65)

“I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have a contempt for men who do. And I think, for one thing, that women are just as principled as men—but they sure as hell aren’t the same kind of principles.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 8 (p. 108)

“You just think about supporting a wife and children on a dollar and ninety cents a day. Most of us work on Sundays; poor people can’t afford to rest on the Sabbath in a great city like this. Sometimes when I do have a Sunday off I go to church and take my wife and the children. It seems respectable, somehow, to go. And then the minister gets up and talks about the gratitude we ought to feel to God for all the blessings he gives us, and how thankful we ought to be that we live through his mercy. It may be very true as far as he is concerned, but I often think—and I don’t mean to be ungrateful or irreverent—that most people in this world have very little to be thankful for, and very little reason to thank God for life at all. Nine tenths of the people in New York find scarcely a moment in their lives which they can call their own, and see mighty little but misery from one year’s end to the other.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)

“How is it possible for me to thank God in my heart for the food he gives me and for life, while every morsel I eat I earn with my toil and even suffering? There may be a Providence for the rich man, but every poor man must be his own Providence. As for the value of life, we poor folks don’t live for ourselves at all; we live for other people. I often wonder if the rich man who owns great blocks of stock in the road and reckons his wealth in the millions does not sometimes think, as he sits at his well-filled table and looks at the happy faces of his children, of the poor car driver who toils for his benefit for a dollar and ninety cents a day, and is lucky if he tastes meat twice a week and can give the little ones at home warm clothes and blankets for the winter.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)

“I was stunned. I was, and I knew it, an ordinary person who long after he was grown retained the childhood assumption that the people who largely control our lives are somehow better informed than, and have judgment superior to, the rest of us; that they are more intelligent. Not until Vietnam did I finally realize that some of the most important decision of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than, and who are not more intelligent than, most of the rest of us. That it was even possible that my own opinions and judgment could be as good as and maybe better than a politician’s who made a decision of profound consequence.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 22 (p. 387)

“Si, a lot of men make far greater sacrifices than he will. For the good of the country.”
“But he wouldn’t even be consulted about it!”
“Neither are they; they’re drafted into the army.”
“Well, maybe they should be asked, too.”
He genuinely didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s wrong to force a man to join an army and kill other people against his own wishes.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

They just looked at me. What I was saying was really incomprehensible to them.
Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 22 (p. 388)

“It’s going too far! My God, look what has already happened. The scientists make fantastic new discoveries which are immediately taken over by a group, almost a breed of men, who always know what’s best for the rest of us. Science learns how to split the atom, and they immediately know that the best thing to do with that new knowledge is to blow up Hiroshima!”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 22 (p. 389)

“Sounds impressive. And expensive.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

“Not at all.” Danziger shook his head firmly. “It will cost, all told, only a little over three million dollars, less than the cost of two hours of war, and a better buy.”
Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 4 (p. 65)

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