Time Loops Quotes & Sayings

One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you'd opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are "pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours." Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along. — Anne Fadiman

The broader the chess player you are, the easier it is to be competitive, and the same seems to be true of mathematics - if you can find links between different branches of mathematics, it can help you resolve problems. In both mathematics and chess, you study existing theory and use that to go forward. — Viswanathan Anand

When I was communicating with the spirit world many years ago, time was explained to me as like a giant circle that loops back on itself. Perhaps it would help to explain the concept that past, present, and future are all happening simultaneously, and not on a linear path, and allows us to experience many lives at the same time. It also brings into play the concept of parallel dimensions. My brain finds this very hard to absorb, but Sid Caesar, a US actor, writer, and comedian, summed it up brilliantly: — Barry Eaton

We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we're all gonna die before it ends. — Peter Watts

David Eagleman describes how you can take a male stickleback fish and have a female fish trespass on its territory. The male gets confused, because it wants to mate with the female, but it also wants to defend its territory. As a result, the male stickleback fish will simultaneously attack the female while initiating courtship behavior. The male is driven into a frenzy, trying to woo and kill the female at the same time. This works for mice as well. Put an electrode in front of a piece of cheese. If the mouse gets too close, the electrode will shock it. One feedback loop tells the mouse to eat the cheese, but another one tells the mouse to stay away and avoid being shocked. By adjusting the location of the electrode, you can get the mouse to oscillate, torn between two conflicting feedback loops. — Michio Kaku

So many people who wanted no part of all this. That's what's new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now that's over. Completion is the end. We're closing the circle around everyone - it's a totalitarian nightmare. — Dave Eggers

"You're wearing your Seduction Hat. Why am I not surprised?"
He offers a pirate's smile. "Did you notice ... I've a new embellishment?" He makes a show of adjusting an owl's tail feather in the band.
I bite back a giggle. "Vegetarian barn owl, I presume?"
"Won't be bothering me again for some time."
"I can guarantee it's not the only one out there."
He loops my arm through his. "Good. I'm always up for a worthy chase." — A.G. Howard

I checked the icebox. The faeries usually brought some sort of food to stock the icebox and the pantry when they cleaned, but they could have mighty odd ideas about what constituted a healthy diet. One time I'd opened the pantry and found nothing but boxes and boxes and boxes of Fruit Loops. I had a near-miss with diabetes, and Thomas, who was never quite sure where the food had come from, declared that I had clearly been driven Fruit Loopy. — Jim Butcher

I wanted people to see me, to change their minds about me. — Fantasia Barrino

This is a gift. This is a gift from God. It's really like the old Biblical passage that talks about your body being a temple. That's not to say that I've never done anything but I've never abused myself. Never gone over the top for a long period of time. — Teena Marie

O night in which the stars feign light, O night that alone is the size of the Universe, make me, body and soul, part of your body, so that - being mere darkness - I'll lose myself and become night as well, without any dreams as stars within me, nor a hoped-for sun shining with the future. — Fernando Pessoa

Everything would turn out exactly the same, and I would return here for a second time, and then, if I was fool enough, a third time, waiting, as now, for my other to touch the canvas. And it would be progressively worse, because though I would know slightly more each time, I would still be powerless to change my fate. Perhaps I would be unaware of the previous decision, yet choose again to come back. Or worse, I would become aware that I was inadvertently repeating the same mistake for a horrific split second just after I made the decision. Infinity was terrifying. Its abyss makes my skin crawl. — Wesley Stace

Banishing zero also solves the infinity problems in general relativity. If you imagine a black hole as a string, no longer do objects fall through a rip in the fabric of space-time. Instead, a particle loop approaching a black-hole loop stretches out and touches the black hole. The two loops tremble, tear, and form one loop: a slightly more massive black hole. (Some theorists believe that the act of merging a particle to a black hole creates bizarre particles such as tachyons: particles with imaginary mass that travel backward in time and move faster than light. Such particles might be admissable in certain versions of string theory.) — Charles Seife

In ancient times people mistook us for gods, but we peculiars are no less mortal than common folk. Time loops merely delay the inevitable, and the price we pay for using them is hefty - an irrevocable divorce from the ongoing present. — Ransom Riggs

Knitting is formed by a series of loops pulled through loops to the end of time or to 'desired length'. By picking up loops and working in the opposite direction you are really picking up the concavities between the loops, and it is sheer unexpected witchcraft that stocking stitch and garter stitch will permit such an anomaly. Be grateful for this and don't expect anymore. — Elizabeth Zimmermann

This automatic feedback is another reason extreme athletes have found flow so frequently, but what if we're interested in pulling this trigger without help from the laws of physics? No mystery here. Tighten feedback loops. Put mechanisms in place so attention doesn't have to wander. Ask for more input. How much input? Well, forget quarterly reviews. Think daily reviews. Studies have found that in professions with less direct feedback loops - stock analysis, psychiatry, and medicine - even the best get worse over time. — Steven Kotler

We belong to an age where apocalypse is our daily bread, coffee's black, and we know we're part of the abyss. Red Spider White Web is right on target in conveying that understanding. It splinters in the mind ... the underworld of the century's imaginings. — Brian Aldiss

There is indeed a level of improvisation where we can distort and shuffle the music patterns, samples, and loops in each phase of the show within fixed cue points, but at the same time there is a constant result that we are trying to achieve each night while performing and operating our system - quite similar in spirit to a broadway show for example: If you go see a musical two nights in a row, the performances are different yet similar. — Thomas Bangalter

Around them, from horizon to horizon, several different eras were all happening at once. Transparent trees and buildings overlapped in a delirious rush of images that changed and grew and bled into each other, see-through structures crumbling away and vanishing only to reappear and run through their accelerated lives over again, a boiling blur of black and white as if a mad projectionist were running many different loops of old film through his whirring, flickering contraption at the same time, at the wrong speed. Looking — Alan Moore

Hey, have you guys seen Rachel?"
"I'm looking at her," Sam said.
Ethan stepped out, and relief settled over his face. He stopped beside Garret and glanced between Rachel and Sean and then at the others.
"You okay?" he asked.
She smiled, not wanting him to worry. "I'm fine. I stepped out for some fresh air not realizing this was a time-honored tradition of escaping Marlene's get-togethers."
Ethan relaxed and stuck his thumbs in his belt loops. "Yeah, it's become something that rivals war games. He who survives the longest without being hauled back in by Mom wins. — Maya Banks

At the far end of the library, a number of men had gathered into a tight, jostling ring around a very pretty, very young woman who was talking at what must have been the top of her lungs. Joe could not really understand what she was telling them, but it appeared to be a story that reflected poorly on her own judgment - she was blushing and grinning at the same time - and it unquestionably ended with the word "fuck." She tugged on the word, drawing it out to several times its usual length. She wound it all the way around her in two or three big loops and reveled in it as if it were a luxuriant shawl. — Michael Chabon

The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most. — Maurice Maeterlinck

Since graduation, I have measured time in 4-by-5-inch pieces of paper, four days on the left and three on the right. Every social engagement, interview, reading, flight, doctor's appointment, birthday and dry-cleaning reminder has been handwritten between metal loops. — Sloane Crosley

As believers, we are running the race together. We are connected by our faith in God and our love for the world that He sent Christ to save. So if one gets weak, we carry them. We aren't called to stop moving forward. We aren't called to criticize each other. No, we are called to encourage each other, to reach down and carry each other, and to keep moving. — Jesse Duplantis

Consciousness is the process of creating a model of the world using multiple feedback loops in various parameters (e.g., in temperature, space, time, and in relation to others), in order to accomplish a goal (e.g., find mates, food, shelter). I call this the "space-time theory of consciousness, — Michio Kaku

Here is my understanding of the Universe and mankind's place in it at the present time: The seeming curvature of the Universe is an illusion. The Universe is really as straight as a string, except for a loop at either end. The loops are microscopic. One tip of the string is forever vanishing. Its neighboring loop is forever retreating from extinction. The other end is forever growing. Its neighboring loop is forever pursuing Genesis. In the beginning and in the end was Nothingness. Nothingness implied the possibility for Somethingness. It is impossible to make something from nothing. Therefore, Nothingness could only imply Somethingness. That implication is the Universe - as straight as a string, as I've already said, except for a loop at either end. We are wisps of that implication. — Kurt Vonnegut

In re-reading 'Presumed Innocent,' the one thing that struck me - and I re-read the book four different times in writing 'Innocent,' interested in different things each time - but I did think there were a couple of extra loops in the plot that I probably didn't need. The other thing that sort of amazed me was how discursive the book was. — Scott Turow

Time is a track that loops back on itself, where memories rattle like tin trains. How had I been spending my days, but in the whirl of memories? — Steve Almond

You'll notice that the Intrepid's inertial dampeners don't work as well in crisis situations, Dahl remembered Jenkins telling them. The ship could do hairpin turns and loop-de-loops any other time and you'd never notice. But whenever there's a dramatic event, there goes your footing. — John Scalzi

Sadly, the only constant in my writing environment stems from some inexplicable need to listen to the news. CNN loops over and over in the background from the time I wake until the time I finally, blessedly, fall asleep. — Lauren Weisberger

[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. — Fisher Ames

I could only reply that I think---I theorise--that something--something else--happens to the memory over time. For years you survive with the same loops, the same facts and the same emotions...The events reconfirm the emotions--resentment, a sense of injustice, relief--and vice versa. There seems no way of accessing anything else; the case is closed. But what if, even at a late stage, your emotions relating to those long-ago events and people change? That ugly letter of mine provoked remorse in me...I felt a new sympathy for them--and her. Then, not long afterwards, I began remembering forgotten things. — Julian Barnes

The thing about living alone is that it gives you a lot of time to think. You don't necessarily reach any conclusions, because wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands. But you do become very good at thinking yourself into endless loops of desperation in half the time it would take a normal person. — Jonathan Tropper

Once heard someone explain thoughts as this: we, as human beings, think that we're thinking. Not true. Most of the time, we're remembering. We're re-living memories. We're running familiar patterns and loops in our head. For happiness, for procrastination, for sadness. Fears, hopes, dreams, desires. We have loops for everything. — Kamal Ravikant

This I know: the mind, left to itself, repeats the same stories, the same loops. Mostly ones that don't serve us. So what's practical, what's transformative, is to consciously choose a thought. Then practice it again and again. With emotion, with feeling, with acceptance. Lay down the synaptic pathways until the mind starts playing it automatically. Do this with enough intensity over time and the mind will have no choice. That's how it operates. Where do you think your original loops came from? — Kamal Ravikant

The Engineer smiled (internally, for of course it had no mouth). It was feeling good. It was feeling optimistic. Moving at its current speed, it would arrive back in Ireland in plenty of time to shut everything down before a series of overloads and power loops inevitably led to a sequence of events which would, in turn, eventually lead to the probable destruction of the world. The Engineer wasn't worried.
And then the truck hit it. — Derek Landy

Perhaps the greatest Maya mystery of all is the cause of the civilization's abrupt decline. The last dated stela erected at Tikal was put up in A.D. 869; the last anywhere in the Maya world, in 909. — David Roberts