Its Time Quotes (page 216)
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I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.
Henri Matisse
she walked rather quickly; she liked to be active, though at times she gave an impression of repose that was at once static and evocative. This was because she knew few words and believed in none, and in the world she was rather silent, contributing just her share of urbane humor with a precision that approached meagreness. But at the moment when strangers tended to grow uncomfortable in the presence of this economy she would seize the topic and rush off with it, feverishly surprised with...
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Life would have been quite another matter for them both if they hadlearned in time that it was easier to avoid great matrimonialcatastrophes than trivial everyday miseries. But if they had learnedanything together, it was that wisdom comes to us when it can nolonger do any good.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It isalso a way of signaling the importance of another person byshowing your willingness to give that person your rarestresource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversationreminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected insome way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce. Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.
Scott Adams
Doom. Doom. You sound like a funeral bell tolling,' said Grandfather. 'Talk like that is worse than swearing. I won't wash out your mouth with soap, however. A thimbleful of dandelion wine is indicated. Here, now, swig it down What's it taste like?'
'I'm a fire-eater! Whoosh!'
'Now upstairs, run three times around the block, do five somersets, six pushups, climb two trees, and you'll be concertmaster instead of chief mourner. Get!'
On his way, running, Douglas thought, 'Four pushups, one tree...
Ray Bradbury
Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men. Frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who suffered because they had to put up with the ways of women—and this from the time that they were born until the day they died.
James Baldwin
- What is it about you?” he repeated. “How does touching you calm me down and excite me at the same time? What is it you want from me? You never ask. Sometimes I wonder, is this a trick?” His eyes on hers, he backed her slowly toward the bed. “Just a way to pull me in? But it’s not. You’re not built that way.”
- “Why would I want anything I had to trick out of you?”
- “You don’t.” He lifted her, held, then laid her on the bed. “So you pull me in. And I end up being the one who’s lost.”
She...
Nora Roberts
All the golden societies of the past to which historians point and turn their wistful smiles have had what patience-players would call a discard pile. They operated on two levels with a slave class who worked, ate, slept, and died and a leisured class who reclined on one elbow and spoke. Naturally it is from this latter group that we learn what life at that time was like. It often makes charming reading but we can hardly take it to be the whole truth.
Quentin Crisp
There's nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can sing that can't be sung. Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. It's easy. Nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved. Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time. It's easy. Nothing you can know that isn't known. Nothing you can see that isn't shown. Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. It's easy.
John Lennon
Well, I'm not sure the New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia. It's not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable.
Noam Chomsky
The nights are filled with explosion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs a last smack of the sea. Day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that Roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. There's never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly - most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire - but it's something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they...
Thomas Pynchon