Audrey Niffenegger

“He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.”

“Part of me wants to turn him into hamburger and part of me doesn't want to beat up somebody who's taped to a tree.”

“Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust.”

“It's easy to be omniscient when you've done it all before.”

“I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I ever loved”

“To world enough and time.”

“Each of them warmed to the sound of the other's voice. They lay in the dark together, in distant cities, each of them thinking, We were lucky this time. And they pressed their phones closer to their ears, and both of them wondered how much longer this separation could go on.”

“We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.”

“The kissed surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.”

“I don't want to boss anyone and I don't want to be bossed.”

“I am so accustomed to living on a metaphysical trapeze that I forget that other people tend to enjoy more solid ground”

“I think about cutting my hair. How nice it would be to wash it, run a quick comb through it, and presto! all set, ready to rock and roll. I sigh. Henry loves my hair almost as though it were a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back. I know he loves it as a part of me, but I also know he would be deeply upset if I cut it off. And I would miss it, too… it's just so much effort, sometimes I want to take it off like a wig and set it aside while I go out and play.”

“No sé cómo reaccionar, porque estoy enamorada de un hombre que está delante de mí y sin embargo él no guarda ningún recuerdo de mi persona. En lo que a él respecta, todo se ubica en el futuro. Me entran ganas de reír por lo extraño de la situación. Todo lo que sé de Henry desde hace años me desborda, mientras el me mira perplejo y temeroso".”

“I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: hours spent in airless classrooms, days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading - trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love." -The Night Bookmobile”

“I guess no matter what your family is like, you're not surprised.”

“Oh. A bigger studio. It dawns on me, stupid me, that Henry could win the lottery at any time at all; that he has never bothered to do so because it's not normal; that he has decided to set aside his fanatical dedication to living like a normal person so I can have a studio big enough to roller-skate across; that I am being an ingrate."Clare? Earth to Clare...""Thank you," I say, too abruptly.”

“It seems like we're going to collide, and 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.”

“But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.”

“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.”

“Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson”

“Henry loves me. Henry is here, finally, now, finally. And I love him.”

“The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.”

“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.”

“Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage.”

“I'm at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. (Time Traveler's Wife)”

“What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.”

“That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living. In a few minutes we’ll be worrying about names for the children.”

“Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.”

“I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see—so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and—discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it?”

“absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird”

“Mama said, "Dreams are different to real life but important too.”

“Los halagos no significan nada para ella, no cree en ellos.Solo las críticas arrancan un rubor a sus mejillas y atraen su atención. Si yo le dijera algo despectivo, ella siempre lo recordaría.”

“Viviré en París y no comeré nada que no sea chocolate;además fumaré puros, me inyectaré heroína y solo escucharé a Jimi Hendrix y The Doors.”

“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.”

“one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.”

“I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.”

“I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room”

“Very few people meet their soulmates at age six. So you gotta pass the time somehow. And Ingrid was very - patient. Overly patient. Willing to put up with odd behavior, in the hope that someday I would shape up and marry her martyred ass. And when somebody is that patient, you have to feel grateful, and then you want to hurt them. Does that make any sense?”

“I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century.”

“I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children of India. ”

“we both smile and we are conspirators.”

“You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.”

“She looks up at me, still rocking. “Henry . . . why did me decide to do this again?” “Supposedly when it’s over they hand you a baby and let you keep it.” “Oh yeah.” --Wednesday, September 5, 2001”

“Yes; the poem goes something like this: 'Bamboo without mind, yet sends thoughts soaring among clouds. Standing on the lone mountain, quiet, dignified, it typifies the will of a gentleman. --Painted and written with light heart, Wu Chen.'" --Sunday, May 31, 1992”

“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.”

“Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.”

“To lose one child, Mr. DeTamble, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness.”

“The cure might be worse than the problem”

“Roy is my favorite security guy. He's a huge African-American gentleman who always has a beautiful smile on his face. He's the King of the Main Desk, and I'm always glad to arrive at work and bask in his magnificent good cheer.”

“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.”