Quotes About Time

To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she'd been and the child she'd become and the adult she would grow up to be,

When are you ever done with the story of someone you love? You turn the most precious of your memories over and over, wearing their edges smooth, warming them again with your heat. You touch the curves and hollows of every detail you have, memorizing them, reciting them once more though you already know them in your bones. Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?

To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she'd been and the child she'd become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin.

Nath had just started the first grade, Lydia had just started nursery school, Hannah had not yet even been imagined. For the first time since she'd been married, Marilyn found herself unoccupied. She was twenty-nine years old, still young, still slender. Still smart, she thought. She could go back to school now, at last, and finish her degree. Do everything she'd planned before the children came along. Only now she couldn't remember how to write a paper, how

It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags. How was it possible to spend so many hours spreading peanut butter across bread?

Later, when they look back on this last evening, the family will remember almost nothing. So many things will be pared away by the sadness to come.

the night before? He had been away four whole

the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales.

To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. You

A small tug at a complicated knot that would take generations to unpick.

But those words had haunted James. How they must have wound around his heart, binding tighter over the years, slicing into the flesh.

How could you blame Mia's parents for not understanding? They had been born in the wartime years; they'd been raised by parents who'd come of age in the Depression, who threw nothing out, not even moldy food. They were old enough to remember when rags became felt for the war effort, when cans and scrap metal could become bullets and cans of grease explosives. Practicality was baked into their bones. They wasted nothing, especially time.

warming them again with your heat. You touch the curves and hollows of every detail you have, memorizing them, reciting them once more though you already know them in your bones. Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?

When are you ever done with the story of someone you love? You turn the most precious of your memories over and over, wearing their edges smooth,

When are you ever done with the story of someone you love?....Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?

She knew that he was telling the truth, that this had been the truth for a long, long time.

It is not too late, he thinks . . . Not yet the end.

They dazzled her, these Richardsons: with their easy confidence, their clear sense of purpose, no matter the time of day.

the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she'd been and the child she'd become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It

I HAVE MEASURED OUT MY LIFE WITH COFFEE SPOONS. DO I DARE TO EAT A PEACH? DO I DARE DISTURB THE UNIVERSE?

So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.

Margaret did not question; she understood this, how slippery and elastic time was in the fact of your child, how it seemed to move not in a line but in endless loops, circling back again and again, overwriting itself.

When, a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn't know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.

they both knew all the details would be a long time in coming. They would trickle out in dribs and drabs, memories surfacing suddenly, prompted by the merest thread, the way memories often do.