“We all, at some point or another, dance to somebody's tune. It seems to me that your time has come. Tick-tock, love. Tick-tock.”

“Tick, tock,” whispers Wiress. I guide her in front of me and get her to lie down, stroking her arm to soothe her. She drifts off, stirring restlessly, occasionally sighing out her phrase. “Tick, tock.” “Tick, tock,” I agree softly. “It’s time for bed. Tick, tock. Go to sleep.”

“There are 86,400 seconds in a day. And in any ONE of them you can decide to CHANGE your life. Tick tock tick tock.”

“Tick, tock.”

“It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the the kind of delibrate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life.”

“There is certainly a universal and unconscious propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... We tend to hear the sound of a digital clock, for example, as "tick-tock, tick-tock" - even though it is actually "tick tick, tick tick.”