Quotes About Time

The sands of time are quicksands, said Adam One. So much can sink into them without a trace. And what a blessing when those things that sink away are needless worries.

Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.

Like a White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century, I wander back, try to regain hose distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep...I sit in the chair and ooze like a sponge.

I wonder why trying to transcend time never even succeeds in stopping it...

And there is so much time to be endured, time heavy as fried food or thick fog; and then all at once these red events, like explosions, on streets otherwise decorous and matronly and somnambulent. I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?

The past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you can see it as décor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

I'm beginning to feel that I've discovered something worth knowing. There's a way out of places you want to leave, but can't. Fainting is like stepping sideways, out of your own body, out of time or into another time. When you wake up it's later. Time has gone on without you.

His time, what a bankrupt idea, as if he's been given a box of time belonging to him alone, stuffed to the brim with hours and minutes that he can spend like money. Trouble is, the box has holes in it and the time is running out, no matter what he does with it.

The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence, but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses

The ochre-yellow linoleum floor hasn't been scrubbed for some time; splotches of dirt bloom on it like grey pressed flowers.

But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing, Nothing goes away.

gazing up at the stars through the gently moving leaves. They seem close, the stars, but they're far away. Their light is millions, billions of years out of date. Messages with no sender.

How young they are, how frisky! I thought. How touchingly innocent! Was I ever like that? I could not remember.

The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still.

Their youth is touching, but I know I can't be deceived by it. The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence through time. You have to go slowly with them.

Excuse this digression. At my age you indulge in these apocalyptic visions. You say, The end of the world is at hand. You lie to yourself - I'm glad I won't be around to see it - when in fact you'd like nothing better, as long as you can watch it through the little secret window, as long as you won't be involved. But why bother about the end of the world? It's the end of the world every day, for someone. Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.

An odd thing souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now.

He doesn't know what is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him it he looks at it too clearly.

Also I could hear Amanda's voice: Why are you being so weak? Love's never a fair trade. So Jimmy's tired of you, so what, there's guys all over the place like germs, and you can pick them like flowers and toss them away when they're wilted. But you have to act like you're having a spectacular time and every day's a party.

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn?

you can't change the past, Aunt Lou used to say. Oh, but I wanted to; that was the one thing I really wanted to do

Time is going faster and faster; the days of the week whisk by like panties.

An odd thing, souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now. You don't really believe you're there, and so you nick the proof, or something you mistake for it.