Quotes About Time

How long does a dream have to last before it's just life?

Sam's grandfather had two core beliefs: (1) all things were knowable by anyone, and (2) anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken. Sam believed these things as well.

I worry for you. If you love everyone, you'll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you've known me a rather long time. Your perspective of time is really very warped, Maya. But I am old and soon, you'll forget you even knew me.

We must fill our infinite days with something.

Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heart—the part of the brain represented by the heart—that was the mystery.

People are capable of great, great change during the span of one lifetime. And women even more than men.

Always remember, mine Sadie: life is very long, unless it is not.

This is what time travel is. It's looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

My grandmother was married for fifty-two years, until my grandfather died. She used to say that a bad marriage was one that hadn't had enough time to get good again.

In my opinion, wounds are like water boiled--they heal best left unwatched.

If we did not mark the days, we would not know how much we had survived.

Methinks I have grown soft in my middle age. But me-also-thinks my latter-day reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. —

E. A. Poe defines a short story as readable in a single sitting. I imagine a "single sitting" was longer back in his day. But I digress again.

In the fifteen or so years he has known her, A.J. thinks Ismay has aged like an actress should: from Juliet to Ophelia to Gertrude to Hecate.

I thought of summer as the living time; the rest of the year was the backward time, the writing time.

they were still young enough to understand time in semesters

Always remember, mine Sadie: life is very long, unless it is not." Sadie knew this to be a tautology, but it also happened to be true.

You have a thousand chances to make something right. That's a heck of a lot of chances, by the way. But they do run out eventually.

But then again, maybe 'I will' is nicer. It has the future in it. 'I do' just has the present.

How quickly you go from being the youngest to the oldest person in a room, she thought.

Sometimes books don't find us until the right time.

How could a person still be as young as he objectively knew himself to be and have had so much time pass?

Torschlusspanik," Simon said. "Okay," Sam said. "I'll bite." "Don't encourage him," Ant said. "What's Torschlusspanik?" Sam said. "It means 'gate-shut panic,' " Simon said. "It's the fear that time is running out and that you're going to miss an opportunity. Literally, the gate is closing, and you'll never get in.

Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, This is what time travel is. It's looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.