“A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.”

“Do days exist without calendars? Does time pass when there are no human hands left to wind the clocks?”

“A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.”

“Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life. ”

“The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only the electronic clocks but the wind-up kind too. The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling I had to believe whatever clocks said -and calendars.”

“Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.”