“When you can't die, she thought, everything sounds like a clock ticking.”

“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.”

“Just like the beating of the heart of a man...so is the ticking of a clock...and just like the ticking of a clock...so is the ticking of a bomb.”

“Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave. ”

“Time can tick when there is no clock.”

“The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.”