Quotes About Time

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become.

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks.

In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could--a look, a whisper, a moan--to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.

But then it passed, as all things do.

Zindagi migzara (life goes on)

Some days, I listen to that clock ticking in the hallway. Then I think of all the ticks, all the minutes, all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without you. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart. I get so weak. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

You're not going to cry, are you? - I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years.

She would grab whatever she could - a look, a whisper, a moan - to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all .

Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.

Only two weeks since he had left, and it was already happening. Time, blunting the edges of those sharp memories.

Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could - a look, a whisper, a moan- to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.

But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think. A

She remembered all too well how time had dragged without him, how she had shuffled about feeling waylaid, out of balance. How shr could ever cope with his permanent absence?

The moment is brief, barely enough for a flutter of the pulse but long enough for her illusory self to catch up with the reality of the woman gazing back from the shopwindow. It is a little devastating. This is what ageing is, she thinks as she follows Isabelle into the store, these random unkind moments that catch you when you least expect them.

Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which Tariq's father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq's absence or presence.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir," he said.

Time is the most unforgiving of fires.

He had a frozen, wide-eyed look to his face, I remember, the way some old people do, like they are perpetually startled by the monstrous surprise that is old age.

Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir