Quotes About Time

YOU WERE HERE says the silvery green light of time breathing in and out like any mortal

Who needs a lifetime?

for the days of age are not only much shorter than those in youth, but they rush away from you at a frightening rate. Take a day: a day in youth is an experience, and the last hour is as far away as a child's Christmas; a day in age is but a dim memory in a week that is already gone. At

from the youth of today. She was beyond them. Her heritage, whatever it was, had forced her into adulthood. 'Nancy's a long time with that tea. You haven't been listening to what I've been saying.' 'Oh yes, I have, dear. Oh yes. I always listen to what . . . you . .

Who wanted to live to a hundred and one? Who wanted to go on living at all at times?

Try not to worry, for time is a great healer.' Such words were futile.

We're all feathers in the fire; time passes on us like a lick of flame, one minute we're there, the next we're gone, forgotten, as if we'd never been.

Understanding's not enough. Understanding's from outside; merely a function of the mind. [. . .] To enter, that's the secret. To become the bridge, to crawl into its sap, to sway with it, to rot over centuries as its heartwood rots. When you are the bridge you will know what the bridge knows. It takes time. A lifetime. And skill.

With time, when I was very old and in my twenties, I might find a man to love, not one forced upon me…

Today exists between yesterday and tomorrow.

someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously, and change the subject.

The house, it's already been a-settin' here for a hundred years. It'll be right here tomorrow. It's today I must be livin'.

The distance we set between ourselves and the events of our past life, which reduces their scale, the backlog of things we failed to notice at the time, the logic which connects them, which back then was invisible, the light shed on them by the epoch they belong to, which mankind already considers a moribund piece of history, their ultimate strangeness, which makes us look back on the person we were as though they were a different being, all these things conspire to turn our past into a dream.

It is said that the future narrows once we cease to believe it is eternal...

I used to picture time as a rope you followed along, hand over hand, into the distance, but it's nothing like that. It moves outward but holds everything that's come before. Cut me open and I'm a tree trunk, rings of nostalgia radiating inward. All the years are nested inside me like I'm my own personal one-woman matryoshka doll. I guess that's true for everybody, but then I drive everybody crazy with my nostalgia and happiness. I am bittersweet personified.

Every year, ever since the girls were born, I have blown out the candles on my birthday cake and wished for just this. Everything I have already. No loss. I can't spare anybody is what I always think. But, then, people must be spared. That is the whole premise of this life, of this time we have with each other.

When you find yourself stressed, ask yourself one question: Will this matter in 5 years from now?

A birthday is a time to reflect on the year gone by, but to also set your goals for the upcoming year.

We need to maintain a proper balance in our life by allocating the time we have. There are occasions where saying no is the best time management practice there is.

Living long is a gift denied to many, and so it comes with a responsibility to make the most of it. At very least to appreciate it. People gripe about growing older—their aches and pains, how much harder everything is—as if they had forgotten that the alternative is dying young.

Funny how a thing like that can be so damned important, but you don't know it's important until an instant later in the big scheme of time. Then you go back and try to retrieve it. You tell yourself it's in there somewhere. But it's really in that no-man's-land of the moment before you woke up and started paying attention to your own life.

That's how most of the last fifty years of my life disappeared, even though I didn't know it before now. And believe me, that's all it takes. One little kiss and then you've thrown your lot in with someone, and your whole life has to be built around him. And all the parts of you that don't fit with him have to go into hiding, and all the ones that do have to come to the surface and act like they're the whole of you. The

And then you notice the days are going by really fast. And they're all starting to look alike. And then you start to feel like this can't be it. This can't be all. This can't be . . . you know . . . a whole life. There has to be more.

Situations are like that. They take up all the time you used to use for working and eating and sleeping. They soak up your whole life like a black hole in space soaks up the sunlight. And then, where you used to have a life, all you have left is a situation.