If I Could Stop Time Quotes & Sayings

I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. there are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."
"You're asking a lot of life if you want it to make sense."
Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.
Basset watched him a moment, then said,
"Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want. — Margaret Frazer

I envy Johnny and at the same time I get sore as hell watching him destroy himself, misusing his gifts, and the stupid accumulation of nonsense the pressure of his life requires. I think that if Johnny could straighten out his life, not even sacrificing heroin, if he could pilot that plane better, maybe he'd end up worse, maybe go crazy altogether, or die, but not without having played it to the depth, what he's looking for in those sad a posteriori monlogues, in his retelling of great, fascinating experiences which, however, stop right there, in the middle of the road. And all this I back up with my own cowardice, and maybe basically I want Johnny to wind up all at once like a nova that explodes into a thousand pieces and turns astronomers into idiots for a whole week, and then one can go off to sleep and tomorrow is another day. — Julio Cortazar

The guilt of moving on seeps into my life every time I do something I thought I couldn't do without you. Every time I make a financial decision, I take over your job. Every time I fix the washing machine, choose a wallpaper without consulting you, I feel guilty. How dare I function without you! What could you have possibly meant to me if I can function without you? Much less, function well. Every so often I'm overwhelmed with the decisions. In those moments I hate you for leaving me. But I am stronger now, and I like being strong. And for this, I feel guilty. When can I stop proving that I loved you? When will I stop believing that loving you better might have saved you? — Stephanie Ericsson

He remembered another one of his mother's saying. It was back when she'd birthed Fanny, her tenth. Someone had siad it was about time she gave up mothering and rested. "Nay," she had said. "I've started something, and now I wouldn't stop if I could, and I couldn't stop if I would. — James Alexander Thom

You would think a person could only die once. You would think you would only find you sister's lifeless body once. You would think you would only have to watch your mother's reaction once after finding out her only daughter is dead.
Once is so far from accurate.
It happens repeatedly.
Every single time I close my eyes I see Les's eyes. Every time my mother looks at me, she's watching me tell her that her daughter is dead for the second time. For the third time. For the thousandth time. Every time I take a breath or blink or speak, I experience her death all over again. I don't sit here and wonder if the fact that she's dead will ever sink in. I sit here and wonder when I'll stop having to watch her die. — Colleen Hoover

MacKenzie started to look frightened and Valor looked like he was going to kill somebody if they didn't stop scaring his girlfriend. At the same time, Victor looked like he was ready to step in and take control of the situation. And if these suits decided to pull out some guns, I could see where they might end up as a set of life-sized garden gnomes. — Taylor Longford

Why me?" I hear his answer in my head before he says it.
"Don't know, honey. But there's a reason for everything." Dad pats my hand. "We'll just have to wait patiently to see what it is."
As i do every time he says that or something like this, I bite back what I'd say if I could reply honestly. I don't believe there's a reason for everything, and having faith doesn't mean I'm blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believed bad things happen to good people. I believe there's evil in the world that I will never understand, but will never stop fighting. If I believe for two seconds that there was a reason behind some of the awful things that occur in this life, I wouldn't be able to stand it. — Tammara Webber

I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time.
If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their torturous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But now, there is now use, now way of stopping time. — Ruth Ozeki

I will love you, Meena," he said fiercely, "until the end of time. I will never stop loving you. My life, before I met you, was nothing. Can you understand that? My life was nothing, meant nothing, even if I may not have known it. And then you came along, and suddenly, everything I knew, or thought I knew, was turned upside down. I will never be the same again. How could I be? You have shown me what it is to love, to feel and laugh and, yes, even to feel alive again. So whether you choose to be one with me or not, I will go on loving you, Meena, even after you are a rotting corpse in the ground. But, Meena, I would like to do whatever I can to prevent you from turning into a corpse. I think I mentioned that before. — Meg Cabot

If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again. — Guy De Maupassant

A world of "if"s, but it would make no difference. If I could go back in time ... but I couldn't. The past was behind me. The best thing now would be to stop looking over my shoulder. It was time to forget the past and look to the present and future. — Darren Shan

The only way through is that kissing gate."
"Why is it called that?"
"I don't know." Lottie considered the gate thoughtfully. "I suppose because a kiss would be the unavoidable consequence of two people trying to pass through it at the same time."
"An interesting theory." Sydney paused inside the narrow gate. Leaning against one side of it, he sent her a challenging smile, knowing full well that she could not go through without brushing against him.
Lottie raised her brows. "By some chance are you expecting me to test it?"
Lord Sydney lifted one shoulder in a relaxed shrug, watching her with a vagabond charm that was nearly irresistible. "I won't stop you, if you feel so inclined."
-Lottie & Nick — Lisa Kleypas

Cassie, stop. I can't do this.' He pulls back to meet my hurt gaze.
'I know why you're doing this.' I draw a breath, letting it out on a long exhale. 'You don't trust me with your heart. You're afraid if you give it to me there's a chance it could be broken, again.'
'It's been shattered once. I'm afraid next time it won't get broken. It'll be obliterated,' he says quietly.
I press a single kiss to his lip. 'You're my Superman. You're not supposed to be afraid of anything.'
'Even Superman had weaknesses. — Rhonda James

I used to eat people, you know."
If he meant to shock her out of crying, he succeeded. A snort burst out of her. "That's awful," she said. Her nose was clogged. "I mean it, that's awful. It's not funny. I'm not laughing."
He sighed. "It was a long time ago. Thousands of years. Once I really was the beast the Elves call me."
She closed her eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath and rubbed her fingers along the seam of his T-shirt. "What made you stop?"
"I had a conversation with somebody. It was an epiphany." His voice was rueful.He rocked her. "From that point on I swore I would never eat something that could talk."
"Hey, that's kind of your version of turning vegetarian, isn't it? — Thea Harrison

Months after my wrists ripping, a talk therapist referred to the act as self-hatred. Until then nobody had said this to me. Did everyone presume that I already knew so? People say it all the time. It's safer to draw this conclusion. Throw in cowardice and you have an insulated public. I was not enraged at all. I was panic stricken. How could I hate myself for wanting to stop such physical sickness and terror? Mine was an act of caretaking, compassion, love. You cannot share this insight with therapists because they think such encourages recurrence. Have you ever stopped diarrhea with a prayer? If you have to go, you go. If you have to die, you die. — Brian Spellman

They tried to make me say that I had been with the group of fellows that raped a white woman," Shepherd said. "It was terrible the way I was whipped, there was just knots all over me. They said they were not going to stop whipping me until I said that I was the one. I kept telling them I was in Orlando where I was. Finally, when I couldn't take it anymore, I said yes." Shepherd said yes, he raped Norma Padgett, and the men dropped their hoses. Yates told Shepherd he could have "saved all the beating" if he had just said yes the first time they asked. — Gilbert King

Lindsay strode to the door and picked up his overcoat from the back of the couch, where he'd tossed it when they came in. She wheeled around to hand him his coat; once again, as expected, Fred was standing right behind her. But this time he wasn't looking at her. He was looking up.
At the mistletoe, directly over their heads.
He met her eyes with a look that glimmered with promise. Then he took the overcoat from her hand and tossed it, lightly, onto the back of the sofa once again.
Everything seemed to slow. His intentions were clear, and she had plenty of time to step back. Yet Lindsay did nothing to stop him when he took her chin in his hand, tipped it upward, and brought his lips down to hers, as purposefully as if he'd meant to do it all along.
Lindsay could have sworn she heard bells....
Still dazed, she followed his eyes upward. "And what's the penalty for ignoring mistletoe?"
"Struck by lightning, I think. — Sierra Donovan

I don't get why people are always trying to escape."

"Really?" said Kate. "Take a look around."

In the distance beyond August's window, the nothing gave way to something - a town, if it could be called a town. It was more like a huddle of ramshackle structures, buildings gathered like fighters with their backs together, looking out on the night. The whole thing had a starved dog look about it. Fluorescent lights cut glaring beams through the darkness.

"I guess it's different for me," he said, his voice taut. "One moment I didn't exist and the next I did, and I spend every day scared I'll just stop beingagain, and every time I slip, every time I go dark, it's harder to come back. It's all I can do to stay where I am. Who I am."

"Wow, August," she said softly. "Way to kill the mood. — Victoria Schwab

Gorillas are in danger of being wiped out by the Ebola virus. I feel like we have limited time to get to know them and understand them and they're going to disappear - that's terrifically sad. Wouldn't it be great if we could stop that? — Sara Gruen

Not the first time. I didn't think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. I — V.S. Naipaul

If you could wish on a star right now, what would you wish for?"I ask him.
"For time to stop.
"Why?"
He shrugs.
"Cause I could live forever at this moment. — Simone Elkeles

It's just that every time I've come home for the past five years - before that, even. From college - something's changed a little more . . ." " - and you're not sure you like it, eh?" Henry was grinning in the moonlight and she could see him. She sat up. "I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb." Henry said, "You wouldn't, you know. I don't mean to press you for an answer - don't move - but you've got to make up your mind to one thing, Jean Louise. You're gonna see change, you're gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can't. Sooner or later you'll — Harper Lee

In the long evenings in west Beirut, there was time enough to consider where the core of the tragedy lay. In the age of Assyrians, the Empire of Rome, in the 1860s perhaps? In the french mandate? In Auschwitz? In Palestine? In the rusting front-door keys now buried deep in the rubble of Chatila? In the 1978 Israeli invasion? In the 1982 invasion? Was there a point where one could have said: Stop, beyond this point there is no future? Did I witness the point of no return in 1976? That 12 year-old on the broken office chair in the ruins of the Beirut front line. Now he was in his mid-twenties - if he was still alive - a gunboy, no more. A gunman, no doubt ... — Robert Fisk

Is it time for your period, or something?"
With unerring instinct, he'd found a great big red button, and pushed it. Wyatt fights to win, which means he fights dirty. I understand the concept because that's how I fight, too, but understanding it didn't stop me from reacting. I could practically feel my blood bubbling with steam. "What?"
He turned around, all controlled aggression, and damned if he didn't push the button again. "What is it about having a period that makes women so bitchy?"
... It was an effort, but I said as sweetly as possible, "It isn't that we're bitchier, it's that having a period makes us feel all tired and achy, so we have less tolerance for all the bullshit we normally SUFFER IN SILENCE." By the time the sentence ended the sweetness was long gone, my jaw was clenched, and I think my eyes were bugging out.
Wyatt took a step back, belatedly looking alarmed. — Linda Howard

A beautiful and binding morning
The world outside begins to breathe
See clouds arriving without warning
I need you here to shelter me.
If I could make these moments endless
If I could stop the winds of change
If we just keep our eyes wide open
Then everything would stay the same
And I know that only time will tell me how
We'll carry on without each other
So keep me awake for every moment
Give us more time to be this way
We can't stay like this forever
But I can have you next to me today — Josh Groban

Can I ... Can I ... "
"You can do anything." She shivers as his hands move over her body, but this time it is wholly unmixed with fear and she cannot believe how wonderful it feels.
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I've ... had something in my wallet ever since I knew ... Well, ever since I hoped that there would be a time when I would need to ... protect you like this."
"And when was that?"
"If I answer that, then will you stop talking?"
"Yes." "I will because your answers are so perfect."
"I saw you try and take care of someone that you thought was weaker than yourself, I couldn't believe that someone who had been through what you;d been through could be that ... well, generous, and thoughtful ... — Julia Hoban

As if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. Since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely. — Cassandra Clare

But I love you, and before you say it words do matter. They're not pointless. If they were pointless then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history and they wouldn't be the things that you think about every night before you go to sleep. If they were just words we wouldn't listen to songs, we wouldn't beg to be read to when we're kids. If they were just words, then they'd have no meaning and stories wouldn't have been around since before humans could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words then people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, stop aching because of them, have sex, quite a lot of the time, because of them. — Cath Crowley

I get so mad at myself for being so weak! How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, "Why? Why are you hitting me?" He leaned down and looked me right in the face. "If I didn't hit you, Minny, who knows what you become." I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I'd ever really thought about it. Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me. — Kathryn Stockett

There were so many places in my time with Rogerson that I wished I could go back to, hitting the stop button at just one moment to stop everything that came after. I had so many If Onlys, but each place I thought to stop meant missing something that came later. I needed it all, in the end, to make my own story find its finish. — Sarah Dessen

This is your captain speaking, so stop whatever you're doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello, wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn't become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search party, and as soon as they find you I will put you off the ship. If you're very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first. Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard's Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two-hour refit, and no one's to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is canceled. I've just had an unhappy love affair, so I don't see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends. — Douglas Adams

[T.J.] Without thinking, I held them out to her. She stopped laughing, and looked at me like she wasn't quite sure what I meant. I waited, and she leaned toward me and opened her mouth. I slid my fingers inside, wondering if my eyes were as big as hers. When she sucked the breadfruit off, my breathing got all messed up.
"More?"
She nodded, just barely, and her breathing didn't sound right either. I scooped up some breadfruit and this time, when I put my fingers in her mouth, she put her hand on my wrist.
I waited for her to swallow and then I lost my shit completely.
I grabbed her face with both hands, and I kissed her, hard. She opened her mouth and I slipped my tongue inside. I could have kissed her for days, and if she told me to stop I wasn't sure I'd be able to. — Tracey Garvis-Graves

I wanted to see if I could pick up some of those sticker badges you give out to kids. I like to give Jay a hard time about his little man-crush on you."
Her uncle's laugh filled his cramped office. "You're terrible, Vi. You act more like your aunt Kat every day. Has she been giving you lessons?" But he was already reaching into his desk drawer and pulling out a stack of the foil stickers. He slid them across the desk. "How's he ever gonna stop being so jumpy around me if you don't stop teasing him?"
This time Violet's smile was genuine. "Give him time, Uncle Stephen; he'll relax. He's just grateful, that's all. — Kimberly Derting

It was the most monotonous day of my life," he replied without a second's hesitation. Then his rigid face broke and re-formed itself into the best smile ever, so that for a moment he really did look as if he had slipped through the bars of whatever confined him. "As a matter of fact, I thought you quite excellent," he said. This time she did not object to his choice of adjective. "Will you crash the car now, please, Jose? This will do me fine. I'll die here." And before he could stop her, she had grabbed his hand and kissed him hard on the knuckle of his thumb. — John Le Carre

Storytelling is a business of unique snowflakes. Every writer is different; every book is different; every reader is different. This is why it's so hard to give writing advice, because what works for me might be poison to someone else. But if I could make one absolute assertion, it would be this: If you are not enjoying your writing, you're doing it wrong. A book is not a battle, nor is it a conquest. A book is a story, and telling it should be an enjoyable exercise. So the next time you don't want to write, don't waste time beating yourself up. Instead, stop and ask yourself why. Why do you not want to do this fundamentally enjoyable thing? What's really going on? — Rachel Aaron

How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can't. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it. — George Orwell

I have thought you could not give everything to your books and also to your children, so for a long time, I thought if I had a child or a family, I'd think, 'How would I support them?' because basically I would stop writing. — Sonya Hartnett

I discover that it is possible to be angry with someone who has died. It is possible to hate yourself for being angry with someone who has died. It is possible to believe that you will die from grief, that somehow your breathing will catch itself up and simply stop. It is possible to believe that you could have stopped the terrible thing that happened at any time, if only you had known. — Anita Shreve

And it was exactly like having flu that time because I wanted it to stop, like you can just pull the plug of a computer out of the wall if it crashes, because I wanted to go to sleep so that I wouldn't have to think because the only thing I could think was how much it hurt because there was no room for anything else in my head, but I couldn't go to sleep and I just had to sit there and there was nothing to do except to wait and hurt. — Mark Haddon

Rory: Amy. I'm gonna need a little help here.
Amy: Just stop it!
Rory: Just think it through, this will work. This will kill the Angels.
Amy: it will kill you too.
Rory: Will it? River said that this place would be erased from time, never existed. If this place never existed what did I fall off?
Amy: You think you'll just come back to life.
Rory: When don't I?
Amy: Rory -
Rory: Anyway, what else is there? Dying of old age downstairs, never seeing you again? Amy, please. If you love me, then trust me and push.
Amy: I can't.
Rory: You have to!
Amy: Could you? Could you if it was me? Could you do it?
Rory: To save you, I could do anything.
Amy: Prove it.
Rory: But I can't take you too.
Amy: You said we'd come back to life. Money-where-your-mouth-is time.
Rory: Amy, but -
Amy: Shut. Up. Together. Or not at all

-Doctor Who — Steven Moffat

If Iran and North Korea, by some horrible, devilish, nightmarish scenario, got together and went to war at the same time, one against Saudi Arabia and one against South Korea, I don't know what we would do about that. I don't know that we could stop them short of using nuclear weapons. — Ben Stein

In my opinion, kids need their parents more in their teens than when they were younger, and that's exactly the time parents think their jobs are done and stop paying close attention. A ten-year-old has more common sense than four sixteen-year-olds put together. Hormones begin shooting every which way, and teenaged nervous systems malfunction, causing them to lose their reasoning abilities. "Oh, I don't know," she said, hesitantly. "I'd rather not. I'm a little busy." I bet. I decided to play my hunch. "If you don't answer my questions, I'll have to find your parents and tell them." I managed a clear tone of implied threat and leaned to the left so I could stare behind her. "You wouldn't like that, would you? — Deb Baker