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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About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.