Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
25 quotes
"Chicago has so much excellent architecture that they feel obliged to tear some of it down now and then and erect terrible buildings just to help us all appreciate the good stuff."
"When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true."
"To world enough and time."
"Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way otherthan just getting older."
". . .Tell me, Clare: why on earth would a lovely girl like you want to marry H"
"Mama said, "Dreams are different to real life but important too."
"But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird."
"The hardest lesson is Clare’s solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I’ve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare’s face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I’ve discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me."
"Knowing the future is different from being told what I like."
"Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older."
"I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark."
"Our love has been the thread through thelabyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust."
"We come to a house and walk down the small walkway to its backyard. In the yard there are two screens and a slide projector. People are seated in lawn chairs, watching slides of trees."
"The Garden Under Snow "Now the garden is under snow a blank page our footprints write onclare who was never minebut always belonged to herselfSleeping Beautya crystalline blanketthis is her springthis is her sleeping/awakeningshe is waitingeverything is waitingthe improbable shapes of rootsmy babyher facea garden, waiting."
"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."
"But I don't want to just believe it, I want it to be true."
"I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home."
"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."
"I love you always. Time is nothing."
"I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes to be united with his facsimile."
"Sister Carmelita says animals don't have souls""Of course animals have souls, where did she get that idea?""She said the Pope says." "The Pope's an old meanie. Animals have much nicer souls than we do. They never tell lies or blow anybody up." "They eat each other." "Well, they have to eat each other; they can't go to Dairy Queen and get a large vanilla cone with sprinkles, can they? ""They could eat grass.""So could we, but we don't. We eat hamburgers."
"...and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hand on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him- Clare"
"The space that I can call mine, that isn't full of Henry, is so small that my ideas have become small."
"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?"
"Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together."