Quotes About Time

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.

The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone.

Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed. The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths. Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Ok, he said, I don't like to disturb you at what I know must be a difficult and distressing time for you, but I need to know first of all if you actually realize that this is a difficult and distressing time for you.

Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.

Forty-two! yelled Loonquawl. Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work? I checked it very thoroughly, said the computer, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.

She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn't believe it for a moment. Nothing terrible ever happened to him, though she was beginning to think that it was time it damn well did. If nothing terrible happened to him soon maybe she'd do it herself. Now there was an idea.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.

The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.

Well the hours are good...' ... 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

You have a time machine and you use it for... watching television? Well, I wouldn't use it at all if I could get the hang of the video recorder.

Will you stop counting!' snarled Zaphod. 'Yes,' said Ford Prefect, 'in three minutes and thirty-five seconds.

There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!

Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems.

Fifteen seconds later he left the house, five hours late but moving fast.

Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for ever.

They live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief

Three pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?" The man next to Ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Did you know, young lady, said Watkin to her, that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn't it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you're killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term future perfect has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone. She looked at her watch. She felt that now was about the time that she could legitimately begin to feel cross. She was cross already, of course, but that had been in her own time, so to speak.