Quotes
See, Artyom, you obviously come from a station where the clock works and you all look at it in awe, comparing the time on your wrist watch to the red numbers above the tunnel entrance. For you, time is the same for everyone, just like light. Well, here it's the opposite: nothing is anyone else's business. No one is obliged to make sure there's light for all the people who have made their way here. Go up to anybody here and suggest just that and it will seem absurd to them. Whoever needs light has to bring it here with them. It's the same with time: whoever needs to know the time, whoever is afraid of chaos, needs to bring their own time with them. Everyone keeps some time here. Their own time. And it's different for everybody and it depends on their calculations, but they're all equally right, and each person believes in their own time, and subordinates their life to its rhythms. For me it's evening right now, for you it's morning - and what? People like you are so careful about storing up the hours you spend wandering, just as ancient peoples kept pieces of glowing coal in smouldering crucibles, hoping to resurrect fire from them. But there are others who lost their piece of coal, maybe even threw it away. You know, in the metro, it is basically always night-time and it makes no sense to keep track of time here so painstakingly. Explode your hours and you'll see how time will transform - it's very interesting. It changes - you won't even recognize it. It will cease to be fragmented, broken into the sections of hours, minutes and seconds. Time is like mercury: scatter it and it will grow together again, it will again find its own integrity and indeterminacy. People tamed it, shackled it into pocket-watches and stop-watches - and for those that hold time on a chain, time flows evenly. But try to free it and you will see: it flows differently for different people, for some it is slow and viscous, counted in the inhalations and exhalations of smoked cigarettes, for others it races along, and they can only measure it in past lives. You think it's morning now? There is a great likelihood that you are right: there's a roughly twenty five percent likelihood. Nevertheless, this morning of yours has no sense to it, since it's up there on the surface and there's no life up there anymore. Well, there're no more people, anyway. Does what occurs above have value for those who never go there? No. So when I say “good evening” to you, if you like, you can answer “good morning.” There's no time in this station, except perhaps one and it's very strange: now it is the four hundred and nineteenth day and I'm counting backwards.
Metro 2033, by Dmitry Glukhovsky
He needs water, the one who has just arrived, dry clothes, and a warm welcome from a friendly host — and if he can get it, a chance to listen and be listen to.
The Wanderer's Hávamál, Translated by Jackson Crawford
Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are
Earthsea - The Four Books, by Ursula Le Guin
If you don't speak, what can I do but leave you?
Earthsea - The Four Books, by Ursula Le Guin
It’s none of their business, where you are, or who you are, or what you choose to do or not to do! If they come prying they can leave curious.
Earthsea - The Four Books, by Ursula Le Guin
- She obeys me, but only because she wants to.
- It’s the only justification for obedience, Ged observed.
Earthsea - The Four Books, by Ursula Le Guin
- She's my best friend, Sam said.
- Sure, Max said, I get that. But is it, you know—I hope this isn't weird that I'm asking this—is it romantic? Or has it ever been romantic?
- No, Sam said. We've never... It's more than romantic. It's better than romance. It's friendship.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
It was never worth worrying about someone you didn't love. And it wasn't love if you didn't worry.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
Sam's doctor said to him, "The good news is that the pain is in your head." But I am in my head, Sam thought.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
Sam knew the foot was gone. He could see it was gone. He knew that what he was experiencing was a basic error in programming, and he wished he could open up his brain and delete the bad code. Unfortunately, the human brain is very bit as closed a system as a Mac.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. [...] Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I’m a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance. But that doesn’t affect the point that the right time is now yours. The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. You’ve plenty; that’s the great thing; you’re, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully young. Don’t at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of course I don’t take you for a fool, or I shouldn’t be addressing you thus awfully. Do what you like so long as you don’t make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!
The Ambassadors, by Henry James