Quotes About Time

Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. --from Lady Lazarus, written 23-29 October 1962

I could smash the measured clicking sound that haunts me - draining away life, and dreams, and idle reveries. Hard, sharp, ticks. I hate them. Measuring thought, infinite space, by cogs and wheels. Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that- I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much- so very much to learn.

Why is it that I find it so difficult to accept the present moment, whole as an apple, without cutting and hacking at it to find a purpose, or setting it up on a shelf with other apples to measure its worth or trying to pickle it in brine to preserve it, and crying to find it turns all brown and is no longer simply the lovely apple I was given in the morning?

The stream that hustles us Neither nourishes nor heals.

Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.

The room blued into view, and I wondered where the night had gone.

I'll call you. Take care. And he was gone. So the rain comes down hard outside my room, and like Eddie Cohen, I say, ... fifteen thousand years - - - of what? We're still nothing but animals.

Era demasiado tarde y su rostro se tornó más nítido, amoroso, como si yo estuviera lista.

Semmi sem valódi, csak a jelen, és én máris érzem, századok súlya fojtogat. Élt egy lány száz évvel ezelÅ'tt is, mint ahogy én most. ? halott. Én vagyok a jelen, de tudom, hogy egyszer én is elt?nök. A nagy pillanat, a lángcsóva, jön és megy, véghetetlen futóhomok. Nem akarok meghalni, nem.

I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles, threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three . . . nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as

Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die.

Everywhere, imperceptibly or otherwise, things are passing, ending, going. And there will be other summers, other band concerts, but never this one, never again, never as now. Next year I will not be the self of this year now. And that is why I laugh at the transient, the ephemeral; laugh, while clutching, holding, tenderly, like a fool his toy, cracked glass, water through fingers.

Tudom – mondta csöndesen Tracy –, de mégis meg fogsz változni, akár akarod, akár nem. Semmi nem marad ugyanaz. Semmi, gondolta Millicent. Milyen rémes is lenne, ha az ember sosem változna… ha az élete végéig az a néhány évvel korábbi, unalmas és szégyenlÅ's Millicent maradna. Szerencsére azonban az ember mindig változik, fejlÅ'dik, halad. (Beavatás)

I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles, threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three ... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.

On a low coffee table, with circular and semicircular stains bitten into the dark veneer, lay a few wilted numbers of Time and Life. I flipped to the middle of the nearest magazine. The face of Eisenhower beamed up at me, bald and blank as the face of a fetus in a bottle.

He always arranged our weekends so we'd never regret wasting our time in any way.

I hadn't slept for seven nights. My mother told me I must have slept, it was impossible not to sleep in all that time, but if I slept, it was with my eyes wide open, for I had followed the green, luminous course of the second hand and the minute hand and the hour hand of the bedside clock through their circles and semi-circles, every night for seven nights, without missing a second, or a minute, or an hour.

I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old

ama as?l son kez yatt???mda bilinecek deÄŸerim: aÄŸaçlar dokunabilir o zaman, bana ay?racak zamanlar? olur çiçeklerin.

If I slept, it was with my eyes wide open, for I had followed the green, luminous course of the second hand and the minute hand and the hour hand of the bedside clock through their circles and semicircles, every night for seven nights, without missing a second, or a minute, or an hour.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad infinitely desolate avenue.

I get a little frightened when I think of life slipping through my fingers like water…

Saturday morning, and I am at the old game of catching time between my fingers as it is running, forever running, away.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh.