“It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of our lives is bound up with waste and opacity... How can so much time hold so little, how can it be taken from us? Months, weeks, days, hours misplaced – and the most precious time of life, too, when our bodies are at their greatest strength, and open, as they never will be again, to the onslaught of sensation.”
“You've always asked me to wait, as if we had time in abundance. But time is too precious, Perry. We've wasted years, when we could have been with each other. Don't you understand how much even one day of loving each other is worth? Some people are separated by distances they can never cross. All they can do is dream about each other for a lifetime, never having what they want most. How foolish, how wasteful to have love within your reach and not take it!" She clamped her teeth on her trembling bottom lip to steady herself”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “This means so much to me.” Slowly, even though he doesn't realize it, Elijah is giving me so much than he ever could and he's not even spending money. He's using time. Some people think time is a waste. But not to me. Time is a gift. Something to be treasured and never taken for granted. Something that's more precious than any dollar a person could spend. Why? Because you never know how much time a person has left.It can be taken away in an instant.In a heartbeat.And I'm determined to never waste a second of mine.”
“I’ll never understand why some people can’t just let others live their lives, you know,” Danial said. “You don’t have to understand. You don’t have to agree. Just leave people alone. When I look at the moon and planets and stars, all that narrow-mindedness and hate seem so petty. The universe is such a big place. One hundred thousand light years just from one end of the Milky Way to the other. One hundred. Thousand. Light years. In the time it’s taken for light to travel from one end of our galaxy to the other, thousands of generations have passed. It really makes you realize how small we are, doesn’t it? How short our time on earth is.”
“When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.”
“Certainly these are not easy times. But history does not contain very many easy times. Years from now, we will look back at this moment--when we worked to reclaim our country--and our children will ask us how we contributed to this mighty undertaking. Our story should be one of patriotic people who beat back the onslaught of radicalism with courage and commitment.”