Quotes from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Why is love intensified by absence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Time is priceless, but it’s Free. You can't own it, you can use it. You can spend it. But you can't keep it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by abscence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming or I'd have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“But you make me happy. It's living up to being happy that's the difficult part.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Do you ever miss him?
Every day. Every minute.
Every minute, she says.
Yes, it's that way, isn't it?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going. - Henry deTamble”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“I love. I have loved. I will love.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“Sometimes I'm happy when he's gone, but I'm always happy when he returns. -Clare”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“that's what I love you for: your inability to perceive all my hideous flaws”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

“When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from The Time Traveler's Wife

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Popular quotes

“Looking in the mirror suddenly she thinks that we all know our dates of birth but that every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date.”
― Ali Smith, quote from Hotel World

“IF YOUR OVERALL SITUATION IS UNSATISFACTORY or unpleasant, separate out this instant and surrender to what is. That's the flashlight cutting through the fog. Your state of consciousness then ceases to be controlled by external conditions. You are no longer coming from reaction and resistance. Then look at the specifics of the situation. Ask yourself, “Is there anything I can do to change the situation, improve it, or remove myself from it?” If so, take appropriate action. Focus not on the hundred things that you will or may have to do at some future time but on the one thing that you can do now. This doesn't mean you should not do any planning. It may well be that planning is the one thing you can do now. But make sure you don't keep running “mental movies” that continually project yourself into the future, and so lose the Now. Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does — do not resist what is.”
― Eckhart Tolle, quote from Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now

“There is an emotional promiscuity we’ve noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to “share the journey.” The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share the intimacies of their lives - their wounds, their walks with God. But he never commits. He enjoys her... then leaves. And she wonders, What did I do wrong? She failed to see his passivity. He really did not ever commit or offer assurances that he would. Like Willoughby to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.

Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends - and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam’s passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well.”
― John Eldredge, quote from Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul

“What is this 'baronet'?" the prince asked.
"Endlessly in between," Harry replied with a sigh. "A bit like purgatory, really.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from What Happens in London

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”
― James Baldwin, quote from The Fire Next Time

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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