Quotes from The Time of My Life

Cecelia Ahern ·  392 pages

Rating: (15.7K votes)


“Truth is, something that I thought was perfect was taken away from me, and I never wanted perfect again. I wanted middle of the road, stuff I didn’t care about so that I couldn’t lose anything I really loved ever again.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“Life has a way of getting what it wants when it really knows what it wants.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“How else do you think life happens? A series of coincidences and occurrences have to happen somehow. Our lives all crash and collide and you think there's no reason or rhyme to it? If there wasn't any reason for it all, what would be the point? Why do you think anything happens at all? There is an outcome, repercussions and occurrences to everybody you meet and everything you say.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“Sometimes wrong numbers are the right numbers”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life



“You never forget about things you've done that you know you shouldn't have done. They hang around your mind, linger like a thief casing a joint for a future job. You see them there, dramatically lurking nearby in striped monochrome, leaping behind postboxes as soon as your head whips around to confront them. Or it's a familiar face in a crowd that you glimpse but then lose sight of. An annoying Where's Wally? forever locked away and hidden in every thought in your conscience. The bad thing that you did, always there to let you know.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.'
'And yet it is still extremely funny.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“But with your life you make a few bad decisions, get unlucky a few times, whatever, but you have to keep going, right?”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“Dreams should make you think, ‘If I had the guts to do it and I didn’t care what anybody thought, this I what I’d really do’.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“Imagine you had a friend who was there for you all the time and you were there for them, but they stopped being there for you as much as they used to which you can understand a little because people have things to do, but then they’re around less and less no matter how much you try to reach out to them. Then suddenly one day - nothing - they’re gone. Just like that. Then you write to them, and you’re ignored, and then you write to them again and you’re ignored and finally you write to them for a third time and they barely even want to make the appointment, they’re so busy with their job, their friends and their car. How would you feel?”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life



“As long as you're around, your life is too. So just as you shower love and affection and attention on the husbands, wives, parents, children and forever friends who surround you, you have to do so equally with your life, because it's yours, it's you, and it's always there rooting for you, cheering you on, even when you feel like you can't do it. I gave up on my life for a while, but what I've learned is that even when that happens and especially when that happens, life never gives up on you. Mine didn't. And we'll be there for each other until those final moments when we will look at each other and say, 'Thanks for staying until the end.'
And that's the truth.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“He was one of those people who made you feel like they either didn't know or didn't care that you were in the room and if they ever did acknowledge your existence it was bizarrely score one to you, and twenty years later they'd tell you they'd always had a crush on you but never had the courage to say anything and you'd tell them, What? I didn't even think you liked me? and they'd say, Are you crazy? I just never knew what to say!”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“I generally don’t become overexcited about things anyway, I’m just not one of those people.I’m not easily surprised by things either. I think it’s because I expect that anything can happen. That makes me sound like a believer and I’m not necessarily that either. I’ll phrase it better: I just accept things that happen. All things.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“We had come here to have a break from thoughts and the hard work that came with the constant interaction with idiots. Or at least people we considered idiots because they were not mind readers and we had to, patiently, use polite words to explain things that we were thinking when really inside we were fighting the urge to take their heads in our hands and softly and repeatedly thud their foreheads off the wall.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“How else do you think life happen? A series of coincidences and occurrences have to happen somehow.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life



“Father and I have the best relationship. Sometimes our thoughts are so similar it’s almost as if we’re the same person. When people see us they are blown away by our bond, by the respect he holds for me, by the admiration I hold for him.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“I'm not one of those people who live and breathes their job, I don't take it so seriously that I want to stay longer than I am paid for or want to socialize with people I spend most of my waking hours with and would never choose to say more than two words to in the real world.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“hundreds of butts in piles on the ground to mark the spot, their lives sucked out of them by their users in panicked distressed frenzy, their souls floating around the insides of lungs while their outsides were dropped, stamped on and deserted”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“You are responsible for your own life and what happens in it, so are the other people.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“you used to be much more…
"muchier".
You've lost your muchness.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life



“So just as you shower love and affection and attention on the husbands, wives, parents, children and forever friends who surround you, you have to do equally with your life, because its yours, its you, and its always there rooting for you, cheering you on, even when you feel like you can't do it.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“This wash't how people spoke to each other. Where was the pretense that we liked each other, that we were both happy to be there, and we'd meet again?”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“If you have a dream, you want to at least be able to try to achieve it in some way. Something that is seemingly beyond your grasp but that you know that with a bit of hard work you could possibly achieve.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


“Imagine you had a friend who was there for you all the time and you were there for them, but they stopped being there for you as much as they used to which you can understand a little because people have things to do, but then they're around less and less no matter how much you try to reach out to them. Then suddenly one day-nothing-they're gone”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Time of My Life


About the author

Cecelia Ahern
Born place: in Dublin, Ireland
Born date September 30, 1981
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“Through the trees there was a motion, a person walking on the road. Isabelle watched as the girl - it was Amy - moving slowly and with her head down, came up the gravel driveway. The sight of her pained Isabelle. It pained her terribly to see her, but why?
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“Love's empire is this globe and all mankind; the most refined and the most degraded, the cleverest and the most stupid, are all liable to become his faithful subjects. He can alike command the devotion of an archbishop and a South-Sea Islander, of the most immaculate maiden lady (whatever her age) and of the savage Zulu girl. From the pole to the equator, and from the equator to the further pole, there is no monarch like Love.”
― H. Rider Haggard, quote from Dawn


“Voices echoed down the hall, from where, Shay was not sure, but they scared her. She did not like being alone in this hallway, and definitely did not like the idea of not being alone in the hallway.”
― Dayna Lorentz, quote from No Easy Way Out


“Mystical experience needs some form of dogma in order not to dissipate into moments of spiritual intensity that are merely personal, and dogma needs regular infusions of unknowingness to keep from calcifying into the predictable, pontificating, and anti-intellectual services so common in mainstream American churches. So what does all this mean practically? It means that congregations must be conscious of the persistent and ineradicable loneliness that makes a person seek communion, with other people and with God, in the first place. It means that conservative churches that are infused with the bouncy brand of American optimism one finds in sales pitches are selling shit. It means that liberal churches that go months without mentioning the name of Jesus, much less the dying Christ, have no more spiritual purpose or significance than a local union hall. It means that we -- those of us who call ourselves Christians -- need a revolution in the way we worship. This could mean many different things -- poetry as liturgy, focused and extended silences, learning from other religious traditions and rituals (this seems crucial), incorporating apophatic language. But one thing it means for sure: we must be conscious of language as language, must call into question every word we use until we refine or remake a language that is fit for our particular religious doubts and despairs -- and of course (and most of all!) our joys.”
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