Quotes About Time

You're old for so much longer than you're young, she thinks. Really it hardly seems fair.

Same for the photos on the facing page: two little girls crammed into an armchair with a puppy, and a baby whose vast bouffant christening gown seemed to be wearing him rather than the other way around. There were no captions. Once the subjects' identities must have seemed so obvious; it hadn't occurred to the album's creator that the time would come when no one alive remembered them.

On grieving: I broke my days into separate moments. See, it's true, I didn't have any more to look forward to. But on the other hand, there were these individual moments that I could still appreciate. Like drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning. Working on something fine in my workshop. Watching a baseball game on TV.

didn't paintings lie also? They showed hours instead of minutes.

And time... Well you know about time. How slow it is when you're little and how it speeds up faster and faster once you're grown. Well now it's just a blur. I can't keep track of it anymore! But it's like time is sort of balanced. We're young for such a small fraction of our lives, and yet our youth seems to stretch on forever. Then we're old for years and years, but time flies by fastest then. So it all comes out equal in the end don't you see.

Oh, that," he seemed to be saying. "Never mind that. All families have their ups and downs; let's just figure the age of this poplar.

Except for an occassional Sunday, they don't make days like they used to. I mean they don't make them whole anymore..........Days seem to come in pieces now. They used to be in blocks-all one solid color to them.

All those years when I was a child, longing for it to be 'my turn,' it hadn't ever occurred to me that my turn would be over, by and by.

You can be in a good marriage and you can be in a bad marriage, and they can both be the same one but just at different times.

How come you pack your clothes in Kleenex?" she asked. Tissue paper, she meant. Willa said, "Oh, that's just something women do when they have too much time on their hands." Cheryl said "Huh?" and Willa laughed.

Didn't it often happen, she thought, that aged parents die exactly at the moment when other people (your husband, your adolescent children) have stopped being thrilled to see you coming? But a parent is always thrilled, always dwells so lovingly on your face as you are speaking.

It all happened so fast, she thought, even though it had seemed endless at the time.

Didn't it often happen, she thought, that aged parents die exactly at the moment when other people (your husband, your adolescent children) have stopped being thrilled to see you coming? But a parent is always thrilled, always dwells so lovingly on your face as you are speaking. One of life's many ironies.

marriages have stages. They have incarnations, almost. You can be in a good marriage and you can be in a bad marriage, and they can both be the same one but just at different times.

Wasn't it odd, she said, how much younger they were than their parents had been at the very same age.

We're young for such a small fraction of our lives, and yet our youth seems to stretch on forever. Then we're old for years and years, but time flies by fastest then.

There were no captions. Once the subjects' identities must have seemed so obvious; it hadn't occurred to the album's creator that the time would come when no one alive remembered them.

The trouble with dying," she'd told Jeannie once, "is that you don't get to see how everything turns out. You won't know the ending." "But, Mom, there is no ending," Jeannie said. "Well, I know that," Abby said. In theory.

Last Christmas Daphne hadn't been born yet; nor had Fanny. Now here sat Daphne chewing a wad of blue tissue while Franny stirred her fists through Agatha's jigsaw puzzle. They both seemed so accustomed to being here. And Danny and Lucy had completely vanished . Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

the past is never dead. It's not even past.

Time softened on Sundays; it stretched itself out in vast rubbery lengths, and by two o'clock, there was more of it than would ever be needed for anything. There was no point in reading a book, writing a letter, or playing a game, because time was too flaccid ever to proceed to the moment in which the plot would twist, the letter would be sent, or the game would be won.

You're right, Jottie, but what good is it? Rightness is nothing. You can't live on it. You might as well eat ashes. I glanced at Father, his bloodshot eyes and the stain on his pants. I loved him so. Once more, I tried to explain. This is all we can do; it's all we're allowed. We can't go back. The only thing time leaves for us to decide -- I picked up Father's hand and held it tight-- is whether or not we're going to hate each other.

Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.