Window Of Time Quotes & Sayings

One of the jobs of art is to inspire discussion, and Brokeback Mountain certainly has done that. It's like a window and a mirror. You're looking through a window at lives you may or may not have experienced. But it's a mirror in the sense we've all felt lonely. we're all, at one time or another, looking for and hoping for love. — Diana Ossana

I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out the window! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The snow came after two o' clock. It fell faintly in the cones of lamplight, descending like fleets or fairies through the cold sky. I was awake - the only one in town, I was sure - and I was sure those miniature fallen sylphs were for me and my personal delectation. They came for me, because nature likes a saint. They settled on my window sill, they collected on the dark grass of my lawn, they danced and whirled in the wind gusts before my eyes. I put my hand to the windowpane to greet it, the first snow. By the time I woke in the morning, I saw that after the snow had come to me, it had visited everyone. — Joshua Gaylord

I looked along the aisle and saw her, and it was as if I saw her for the first time. Everything changed. The ancient featureless interior of me spangled orange, mint, cat-blue. I looked back to the window immediately, my face damp, my breath caught. And worried I would never have the courage to look at her again. — Sonya Hartnett

In one such shop I saw lots of books in the window. I was reminded that humans have to read books. They actually need to sit down and look at each word consecutively. And that takes time. Lots of time. A human can't just swallow every book going, can't chew different tomes simultaneously, or gulp down near-infinite knowledge in a matter of seconds. They can't just pop a word-capsule in their mouth like we can. Imagine! Being not only mortal but also forced to take some of that precious and limited time and read. No wonder they were a species of primitives. By the time they had read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it they are dead. — Matt Haig

Ceony made her way down the hall, peeking briefly into her room. The bed had been remade, and she smiled. Emery's odd knack for tidiness had him folding and tucking blanket corners as though crafting a spell, and while he had demonstrated to Ceony how to properly make a bed, she'd never taken the time to mimic the art. She often kept the door to her room closed just so Emery wouldn't be tempted to rearrange her things, but with her out of the house, there was nothing to stop him.
He must be bored.
She passed her room and stuck her head into the library, but the paper magician wasn't there. The table and telegraph had both been moved to the right of the window, however. Terribly bored, then. — Charlie N. Holmberg

You strutted back and forth to the window at Fulsham's Custard Stand five times while I was sitting there, eatin' my cone the first time I saw you, 'cause you wanted some of this and got it by swinging your ass in my face. — Kristen Ashley

We said we'd be friends.'
He looks confused. 'Yeah.'
I don't want to be.'
There's space between us, and in that space there's darkness. I take another step, so close that we share a breath. The same one. In and out.
Tess,' he says. I know it's a warning, but I don't care.
What's the worst thing that can happen?'
It'll hurt,' he says.
It already hurts.'
He nods very slowly. And it's like there's a hole in time, as if everything stops and in this one minute, where we look at each other so close, is spread out between us. As he leans towards me, I feel a strange warmth filtering through me. I forget that my brain is full of every sad face at every window I've ever passed. — Jenny Downham

There is a horrifying loneliness at work in this time. No, listen to me. We lived six and seven to a room in those days, when I was still among the living. The city streets were seas of humanity; and now in these high buildings dim-witted souls hover in luxurious privacy, gazing through the television window at a faraway world of kissing and touching. It is bound to produce some great fund of common knowledge, some new level of human awareness, a curious skepticism, to be so alone. — Anne Rice

Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train. I am not inspired; nothing so uncomfortable as that. I am never seized with a sudden idea for a masterpiece, nor form a sudden plan for some new enterprise. My thoughts are just pleasantly reflective. I think of all the good deeds I have done, and (when these give out) of all the good deeds I am going to do. I look out of the window and say lazily to myself, "How jolly to live there"; and a little farther on, "How jolly not to live there." I see a cow, and I wonder what it is like to be a cow, and I wonder whether the cow wonders what it is to be like me; and perhaps, by this time, we have passed on to a sheep, and I wonder if it is more fun being a sheep. My mind wanders on in a way which would annoy Pelman a good deal, but it wanders on quite happily, and the "clankety-clank" of the train adds a very soothing accompaniment. So soothing, indeed, that at any moment I can close my eyes and pass into a pleasant state of sleep. — A.A. Milne

I climb through the rubble toward the door. It takes a long time, time enough for a Giant to see me from the blood-red stained-glass eye window and reach out to crush me in his hand the size of a tractor. — Francesca Lia Block

Every time Michaels spoke to or looked at him like Judge was the stars and moon, every time Austin accepted him inside of his body, all Judge's inhibitions went out the window. — A.E. Via

The road was wet with rain, black and shiny like oilskin. The reflection of the street lamps wallowed like yellow jelly-fish. A bus was approaching - a bus to Piccadilly, a bus to the never-never land - a bus to death or glory.
I found neither. I found something which haunts me still.
The great bus swayed as it sped. The black street gleamed. Through the window a hundred faces fluttered by as though the leaves of a dark book were being flicked over. And I sat there, with a sixpenny ticket in my hand. What was I doing! Where was I going?
("Same Time, Same Place") — Mervyn Peake

Lisa, please tell me you didn't say anything embarrassing?"
"Like what?" she said.
"Like the time I got stuck in the cubbyhouse window." I held my breath in hope.
"Told him."
"The tomato up my nose incident?"
"Told him."
"The fingers I superglued together?"
"Told him.
"Is there anything you didn't tell him?" I asked anxiously.
I could see Lisa almost congratulating herself on the other end of the phone. "Yes. I didn't tell him about the time you had an erection for two days straight and Dad had to take you to emergency about it. — Renae Kaye

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We had a signal. When I turned the pail upside down by the kitchen house, that meant everything was clear. Mauma would open the window and throw down a taffy she stole from missus' room. Sometimes here came a bundle of cloth scraps - real nice calicos, gingham, muslin, some import linen. One time, that true brass thimble. Her favorite thing to take was scarlet-red thread. She would wind it up in her pocket and walk right out the house with it. — Sue Monk Kidd

This is the only time in history when I get to fight for God. This is the only part of my eternal story when I am actually in the battle. Once I die, I'll be in celebration mode in a glorified body in a whole different set of circumstances. But this is my limited window of opportunity, and I'm going to fight the good fight for all I'm worth. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Conclusions are based in time. We live in time. So any definition of success is bound up with time. With other things you can say, "Can I yo-yo? Can I juggle?" Usually you have a pretty small window in which to get your answer. Stand-up is different. You can't do stand-up for one night and say, "Am I a funny stand-up comedian?" In two months or two years you'll start to realize it. — Demetri Martin

These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered, gleaming in the sunshine among the snowdust quivering in the air, while the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted out of a little window as the loaves were put out. All this together was so extraordinarily wonderful that Levin burst out laughing and crying for joy. — Leo Tolstoy

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. — James Joyce

I gaze out, to the stars. I remember the first time I saw real stars, through the hatch window. They were beautiful then, but now, seeing them here, all around me, beautiful feels like an inadequate word. I see the stars as a part of the universe, and having spent my life behind walls, suddenly having none fills me with both awe and terror. Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.
A million suns.
Centuries away is Sol. Circling around it is Sol-Earth, the planet Amy came from. And one of these other stars is the Centauri binary system, where the new planet spins, waiting for us.
And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.
Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.
But all of them are out of reach. — Beth Revis

The eye: the window to the soul; the center of the face's beauty; the point where a person's identity is concentrated; but at the same time an optical instrument that requires constant washing, wetting, maintenance by a special liquid dosed with salt. So the gaze, the greatest marvel man possesses, is regularly interrupted by a mechanical washing action. — Milan Kundera

Oh how lovely to hear the birds!' an elderly friend recently exclaimed. I smiled, 'Yes, isn't it?' Actually it reminded me of living in my ex's flat; those early mornings being woken up by the incessant chirping of baby birds and myself at the window with an air rifle. Good times. Because that's the other thing about working alone for long periods of time, you begin to get nostalgic about all the rubbish. — Emily Benet

The years, the months, the days, and the hours have flown by my open window. Here and there an incident, a towering moment, a naked memory, an etched countenance, a whisper in the dark, a golden glow these and much more are the woven fabric of the time I have lived. — Howard Thurman

I'm tired of being around men all the time. I'm going to start a band called Skirt with three girls and I'll play the guitar and sing backing vocals in drag. I went window shopping when I was in New York, saw a lot of amazing dresses. — Brian Molko

My dressing room was right on the water, and I would climb out of my window and walk around on the roof, whenever I needed time to think, or whenever I couldn't get a scene together. My father even came out there on the roof with me. We just walked around and talked up there, just to get away from everything, and nobody could get to us there. I really do love that place very much. It holds a very deep-rooted place in my heart. — Angie Harmon

Give yourself some credit," he went on, "not a lot of silkies would have made it this far."
"I stopped you from killing Chorda," (...)
"Hey, come one," Rafe said. "It's your first time in the Feral Zone. Of course you made mistakes."
"Like falling for the wrong boy?" I'd said it to be funny, since he was always teasing me about Everson, but Rafe grew still.
He turned his gaze on the dark skyline. "No, you didn't. He's a stiff, but he's a good guy, he won't crawl out of your window after you fall asleep or come on to your sister."
"I don't have a sister."
"Missing the point. — Kat Falls

The smell of grease in the Horseshoe Diner was strong, like the residuals of every meal that had ever been cooked over its open griddle. I lingered in a corner booth near the window, speaking to my wife Ava on the cell phone. With as much free time as a corpse, I pondered past mistakes, but I kept the call short before she asked too many questions and revived the dying thoughts in my mind. A man was a sharp and useful tool, I thought, as long as he never paused to consider it. — Christopher Klim

The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you've ever seen a space IMAX movie, that's really what it looks like. I wish I'd had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map, but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most of the time. — David M. Brown

Adventures don't happen when you're worried about the future or tied down by the past. They only exist in the now. And they always,always come at the most unexpected time,in the least likely of packages. An adventure is an open window; and an adventurer is the person willing to crawl out on the ledge and leap. — Cora Carmack

This initial numbness and denial is shock and it is a gift. Shock is a grace period. It gives a woman time to gather what she needs around her, before the exhaustion and panic set in like a heavy snow. Shock allows her time to circle her people so that she can enter the hard work of grief, which will require all of her. Shock is the window offered after the fall so a woman can prepare herself for winter. Two — Glennon Doyle Melton

When Billie climbed into the taxi, Adrian paid the cab driver, then braced his forearms on the back window. "Billie. Have you forgotten?"
"No." She watched the melting shift of shadows in his eyes, unable to read them. "A favor for a favor. I owe you."
"I'll call you." He leaned in to catch her lips one last time in a soft, lingering kiss. Then he stood back and the taxi rolled out of the drive. Billie took a single backward glance at him standing barefoot, hands buried in his pockets, where she'd left him. God help her. Whatever he wanted, she would gladly give. — Shelby Reed

I lie down on my bed, my back to the window, and the tears finally arrive, running down my face, into my ears, onto my pillow. I lie there for a long time, for hours maybe, and right as I'm about to finally drift to sleep I think I hear the flutter of Christian's wings as he flies away. — Cynthia Hand

The hedges and driveways were black and silent, but he imagined the silhouette of a jacket hood could move into view at any time, skimming past the light of a window like a shark's fin. — Teresa Flavin

Our awareness of time affects how we think and act. This is illustrated by the story about the clock in a restaurant window. It "had stopped a few minutes past noon. One day a friend asked the owner if he knew the clock was not running. 'Yes,' replied the restaurant man, 'but you would be surprised to know how many people look at that clock, think they are hungry, and come in to get something to eat."' If only there were some kind of divine timepiece that would arouse a spiritual hunger in people! — James E. Faust

Phelan," Cam said, looking up with an easy smile, "have you come to see the timber yard?"
"Thank you, but I'm here for another reason."
Leo, who was standing near the window, glanced from Christopher's rumpled attire to Beatrix's disheveled condition. "Beatrix, darling, have you taken to going off the estate dressed like that?"
"Only this once," she said apologetically. "I was in a hurry."
"A hurry involving Captain Phelan?" Leo's sharp gaze moved to Christopher. "What do you wish to discuss?"
"It's personal," Christopher said quietly. "And it concerns your sister." He looked from Cam to Leo. Ordinarily there would have been no question concerning which one of them to approach. As lord of the manor, Leo would have been the first choice. However, the Hathaways seemed to have settled on an unconventional sharing of roles.
"Which one of you should I talk to?" Christopher asked.
They pointed to each other and replied at the same time.
"Him. — Lisa Kleypas

Saturday, July 2, 2016
1:51 PM
One ancient retired Air Force nurse does nothing but scream 'Help!' for hours at a time from a second-story window. Since the Ennet House residents are drilled in a Boston-AA recovery program that places great emphasis on 'Asking For Help,' the retired shrieking Air Force nurse is the object of a certain grim amusement, sometimes. Not six weeks ago, a huge stolen HELP WANTED sign was found attached to #4's siding right below the retired shrieking nurse's window, and #4's director was less than amused, ... — David Foster Wallace

I call it God Light, because it reminds me of heaven. Every time the light shines through the window we built or any window at all, you'll know I'm right there with you, okay? That's going to be me. I'll be the light in the window. — Nicholas Sparks

The dawn, even when it is cold and melancholy, never fails to shoot through my limbs as with arrows of sparkling piercing ice. I pull aside the thick curtains, and search for the first glow in the sky which shows that life is breaking through. And with my cheek leant upon the window pane I like to fancy that I am pressing as closely as can be upon the massy wall of time, which is for ever lifting and pulling and letting fresh spaces of life in upon us. May it be mine to taste the moment before it has spread itself over the rest of the world! Let me taste the newest and the freshest. From my window I look down upon the Church yard, where so many of my ancestors are buried, and in my prayer I pity those poor dead men who toss perpetually on the old recurring waters; for I see them, circling and eddying forever upon a pale tide. Let us, then, who have the gift of the present, use it and enjoy it ... — Virginia Woolf

I don't want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I'm not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies." She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. "You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it to Jen that she did wilfully fuck him for five years, before dumping him without warning in the twilight of his procreative window, and taking up with young Jack-the-lad, only twenty-four years old and with a cock as long as my arm. The court rules in favor of John. Every time. Jen must pay damages. Huge sums. Plus six months in jail. No - nine. Poetic justice. — Zadie Smith

Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jesus. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.
Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning. It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser.
Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it. So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut

What's important is the time we spent working on it together. What's important is that Sam is the kind of guy who will trade notes on a sketchpad and teach me how to make tuna melts and drop everything to drive to a parking lot
when I need him and throw stones at my window to make sure I'm okay. — Hannah Harrington

As always, there are exceptions. Adults with training can still learn to distinguish speech sounds in other languages. But in general, the brain appears to have a limited window of opportunity in an astonishingly early time frame. The cognitive door begins swinging shut at 6 months old, and then, unless something pushes against it, the door closes. By 12 months, your baby's brain has made decisions that affect her the rest of her life. — John Medina

He grumbles incoherently, opens the window a fraction and continues to smoke away. It's like every time Sidney Drake enters a new location he has to readjust the atmosphere, akin to one of those sci-fi shows where they oxygenate the planet, but for my dad it's in a suffocating reverse. He replaces the clean wholesome air with a non-stop puff of toxic poison. — Tom Conrad

In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them. I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em'ly, and I don't love Agnes - no, not at all in that way - but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on everything around. — Charles Dickens

Harry's suspension of disbelief blew completely out the window.
You're giving me a time machine to treat my sleep disorder.
You're giving me a TIME MACHINE to treat my SLEEP DISORDER.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
"Ehehehehhheheh ... " Harry's mouth said. He was now holding the necklace away from him as though it were a live bomb. Well, no, not as if it were a live bomb, that didn't begin to describe the severity of the situation. Harry held the necklace away from him as though it were a time machine. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

In terms of how the music developed, it was my normal process, which I would say is really a hybrid process of sketching on bits of paper, playing the piano, playing synthesisers, using the computer, staring out of the window, finding things I'd forgotten about, happy accidents, failed plans, best intentions, equipment failures. It is a multidimensional process incorporating a lot of planning and intention and a lot of randomness. Ultimately I just follow the material where it wants to go a lot of the time. — Max Richter

But in this life we take turns at being enchanting, then enchanted. First we play in the streets, unaware of the freedom burning in the sun on our hair and the cigarette in our mouth, unconscious of the daydreams we inspire. Then it's our time to sit at a window and watch, and we are moved. — Jardine Libaire

Lying there, I close my eyes for a time, then open them. I silently breathe in, then out. A thought begins to form in my mind, but in the end I think of nothing. Not that there was much difference between the two, thinking and not thinking. I find I can no longer distinguish between one thing and another, between things that existed and things that did not. I look out the window. Until the sky turns white, clouds float by, birds chirp, and a new day lumbers up, gathering together the sleepy minds of the people who inhabit this planet. — Haruki Murakami

Kolya rose to a crouch and crept to the front door, keeping his head below the window line. I followed. We kneeled with our backs against the door. Kolya checked his pistol one last time. I pulled the German knife from my ankle sheath. I knew I looked silly holding it, the way a young boy looks holding his father's shaving razor. Kolya grinned at me as though he was about to start laughing. This is all very strange, I thought. I am in the middle of a battle and I am aware of my own thoughts, I am worried about how stupid I look with a knife in my hand while everyone else came to fight with rifles and machine guns. I am aware that I am aware. Even now, with bullets buzzing through the air like angry hornets, I cannot escape the chatter of my brain. — David Benioff

And when I looked outside the window, something inside of me churned, swallowing hard I looked up and saw blue. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back the tears and emotions that were swelling inside of me. And then I realized, the only time that I could feel anything at all, was when I could feel him. — Everance Caiser

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet
the new neighbor.
We've built more computers to hold more
information to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communications;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These times are times of fast foods;
but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It is time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.

--authorship unknown
from Sacred Economics — Charles Eisenstein

Before the immigration crisis was declared in the summer of 2014, minors seeking immigration relief were given approximately twelve months to find a lawyer to represent their case before their first court hearing. But when the crisis was declared and Obama's administration created the priority juvenile docket, that window was reduced to twenty-one days. In real and practical terms, what the creation of that priority docket meant was that the cases involving unaccompanied minors from Central America were grouped together and moved to the top of the list of pending cases in immigration court. Being moved to the top of a list, in this context, was the least desirable thing - at least from the point of view of the children involved. Basically, the priority juvenile docket implied that deportation proceedings against them were accelerated by 94 percent, and that both they and the organizations that normally provided legal representation now had much less time to build a defense. — Valeria Luiselli

He wished he could show her the memory of the very first time
he'd laid eyes upon her. A random moment, his window to her
world, and yet it
had pierced his excuse for a soul as if it were destiny. As if she
were his destiny. A thousand times he'd looked through the realms,
but one
glimpse had forever changed their paths. — Gwen Hayes

Where the road sloped upward beyond the trees, I sat and looked toward the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell which room was hers. All I had to do was find the one window toward the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final throb of a soul's dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night. — Haruki Murakami

These books ain't window dressing. I think Machiavelli's the most sophisticated writer outside of Shakespeare. Way ahead of his time. Such a manipulative person. Everything he accomplished he did by kissin' ass. — Mike Tyson

He thought again of the watch in the window. It had twelve black numbers on its moon face and there was magic to that. For these were numbers that were not really numbers at all but letters like in words. He shivered at the possibilities of such untold magic. — Davis Grubb

Sometimes, in a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise
till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at
my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the
hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but
so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I
minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing
memorable is accomplished. — Henry David Thoreau

Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle? - the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, THAT ain't a picture! — Mark Twain

I had discovered that the plainest house can crown a fantasy or daydream. An open window can be tolerated. So can an open door. But I discovered the value of four walls and a roof. Something about containment that at the same time offers escape. — Lloyd Jones

As I sit here on a snowy morning watching the flakes gently fall outside my window, I look at the 300-year-old building across the street and the beautifully carved angels on its facade. There was a time people would create, just to give something beautiful to the world which we are so blessed to live in and a time when people understood the work of all of the arts. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain. Put the time in. Hear your mistakes. Yeah, it sucks, it's humbling, it makes you want to throw the guitar out the window. But if you work on your mistakes, they'll eventually go away, and you'll become a strong player. — John Petrucci

no matter it's actual narrative content, every movie is a ghost story. A film's production forms a time capsule, becoming a static window into a particular moment of a particular era. Even period pieces tell you more about the times they were made in than the times they depict — Gemma Files

And she leaves. She opens the door and, without a backward glance, goes out and shuts the door. I stand at the window and watch her go. She vanishes in the shadow of a building. Hands resting on the sill, I gaze for the longest time at where she disappeared. Maybe she forgot something she wanted to say and will come back. But she never does. All that's left is an absence that's like a hollow space. — Haruki Murakami

But Philippa was hardly listening. "It's a riddle," she declared finally, pointing to the card in the strange little round window. "I think that if we answer the riddle we can get in. Listen 'The beginning of eternity. The end of time and space. The beginning of every end. And the end pf everyplace."
John shrugged. "I don't get it."
"No, but I do," Philippa said triumphantly. "The answer is the letter e. E is the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, the beginning of every end, and the end of everyplace. — P.B. Kerr

Emperor's Soul pg 123:
Attempts to Forge the window to a better version of itself had repeatedly failed; each time, after five minutes or so, the window had reverted to its cracked, gap-sided self.
Then Shai had found a bit of colored glass rammed into one side of the frame. The window, she realized, had once been a stained glass piece, like many in the palace. It had been broken, and whatever had shattered the window had also bent the frame, producing those gaps that let in the frigid breeze.
Rather than repairing it as it had been meant to be, someone had put ordinary glass into the window and left it to crack. A stamp from Shai in the bottom right corner had stored the window, rewriting its history so that a caring master craftsman had discovered the fallen window and remade it. That seal had taken immediately. Even after ll this time, the window had seen itself as something beautiful. — Brandon Sanderson

I feel ugly I said and you looked at me as if I spoke a different language. There are things you will never understand and if there were words to describe the rapture that takes place in my head from time to time I would put my hand in front of your eyes to protect you from all the ugliness in the world.
I kept my eyes on the streetlights outside the window and you kissed every inch of my body as if you could kiss the pain away. — Charlotte Eriksson

Nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Barton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; seen it between peoples shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window. — Virginia Woolf

The first time Raffaele ever saw Adelina, it was a stormy-wracked night that changed her life and, indeed, the world. He recalls looking down from the window in his Dalia lodging to see a girl with silver-bright hair, conjuring an illusion of darkness such that he had never seen. He remembers the day she first came to his chambers in Estenzia, when Enzo was still alive and she was still innocent, and the way she looked up at him with her uncertain, damaged gaze. He remembers her test, and what he said to Enzo that night. How long ago that had been. How he had judged her wrongly. — Marie Lu

Look at me," John gasped. "I cannot remember the last time I allowed
myself to be so happy. I smile all day long without knowing why. I climbed a bloody tree, vaulted through your window, and here I am - laughing.It's the middle of the night, and yet here I am
with you. Dancing at midnight, holding perfection in my arms." -John Blackwood to Arabella Blydon — Julia Quinn

He stopped before opening the door and faced her. "You'll leave the window open for me and you'll be naked. When I come back, I'll take what I want from you, as many times as I want to." He grinned; it was pure and raw and astonishingly beautiful. "Understand me Lady Dagmar?" She shook her head. "No. You'll have to explain it to me."
"I will. Even if I have to tie you to bed and explain it to you again and again and again." He looked over one more time. "And don't play with yourself after I'm gone. Don't want you wearing my pussy out before I've had a chance to use it." With his hand on the door, Gwenvael rewarded her with the warmest smile she'd seen from anyone. "Besides, you look so beautiful when you come, I don't want to miss a second of it. — G.A. Aiken

In our absence, the violet early evening light pours in the bay window, filling the still room like water poured into a glass. The glass is delicate. The thin, tight surface of the liquid light trembles. But it does not break. Time does not pass. Not yet. — Marya Hornbacher

Aunt Viney (short for 'Lavinia'), viewed in the grey daylight that came in through the dining-room window, was always a rather imposing spectacle. She was fifty-one years of age, and had large staring eyes, quick bustling movements, more than a tendency to stoutness, a menacing optimism that was not quite matched by a sense of humour, and the most decided opinions upon everything. She was an excellent 'manager', and for more than a decade had lived at the Manse with her sister and brother-in-law and their children (there had been boys at one time), looking after them all with undoubted if rather relentless competence. — James Hilton

I read this book, it said a woman should think of her virginity like it's a window. And every time you sleep with a guy, it's like letting him put his fingerprints on your window. Staining your glass. — Eric Jerome Dickey

Taking a deep breath and trying not to reveal my sudden feeling of inadequacy, I was about to come back with a counter offer when a knock on the window startled me and I did what I always do ... I squeaked, which Tristan thought was pretty hilarious. And for whatever reason, that embarrassed me. Nooo, not telling a guy I'd need gum in order to give him a blowjob, or being more than half-naked with a guy and almost having sex for the time, nor sitting on said guy's lap while he has an obvious erection ... no, none of that embarrasses me. Nope, squeaking like a timid mouse in front of him ... that's what turns my face bright red. I'm tellin' ya, I have issues. — Jenn Cooksey

They arrived home again to a most peculiar sight. The small garden at the front of the Banana House had been transformed. A tidal wave of cushions, beanbags, quilts, hearth rugs, and sleeping bags appeared to have swept up the lawn and broken at the wall. From Indigo's window a multicolored rope of knotted bedsheets came snaking out and ended among the cushions. As Micheal and Caddy watched, a mattress emerged and fell to the ground, followed by a rain of pillows.
"Indigo!" shouted Caddy, jumping out of the car.
Indigo's and Rose's heads appeared in the window above.
"It's all right, Caddy!" Indigo called cheerfully. "We've been doing it all the time you've been gone."
"We keep finding more stuff to land on!" added Rose. "Look! — Hilary McKay

Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time. — Thomas Wolfe

He knocked absurdly on the skull like a man impatient for a door to open. His eyes glazed over. He appeared to be in the grasp of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
'Time is slowing,' he said in a leaden voice. 'Each moment grows and fattens like a drop of rain on a window sash, waiting to fall. — Norman Lock

- and there, on the table under her bedroom window, lies the voice that has set her dreaming again. Fragments of a life lived a long, long time ago. Across a hundred years the woman's voice speaks to her - so clearly that she cannot believe it is not possible to pick up her pen and answer. — Ahdaf Soueif

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen. — Marcel Proust

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work. — James Joyce

Have you ever sat on a window seat, in the train of your memories while it's raining heavily? Rain has this ridiculous power of waking up all the angels and demons inside us at once, doesn't it? All of a sudden there is a war inside us, between both the sides. We can do nothing but clench our fists and watch our train derail and take a path we have never come across before. All we know at that point of time is that we are going to crash somewhere. Either our demons win or the angels, we are going to get wounded somewhere. — Akshay Vasu

Solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen.
***
Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again. — Virginia Woolf

The wind was blowing from the east and the cedars bent before it, - blowing from the east like the breath of the war god. And Fred and Stanley were waving their hats gayly back to her, while the cedars bent and the wind blew from the east. They were like her own boys marching off to war. Children of her children, she loved them as she had loved their parents. Did a woman never get over loving? Deep love brought relatively deep heartaches. Why could not a woman of her age, whose family was raised, relinquish the hold upon her emotions? Why could she not have a peaceful old age, wherein there entered neither great affection nor its comrade, great sorrow? She had seen old women who seemed not to care as she was caring, whose emotions seemed to have died with their youth. Could she not be one of them? For a long time she stood in the window and looked at the cedars twisting before the east wind, like so many helpless women under the call from the east. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I get really irritated with crap drivers, so the last time I got cross was probably behind the wheel. I'll shout from the safety of my car, with the window up, but if anyone ever got out and challenged me I'd be terrified. — Nikki Sanderson

She seemed pleasantly surprised that I'd read the homework assignment the night before, despite being somewhat distracted by the thoughts of gremlins lurking around my computer. Apparently satisfied that I could listen and stare out the window at the same time, Miss Singer finally left me alone, and I went back to brooding in peace. — Julie Kagawa

It was a time of dark dreams. They washed in like flotsam on the night tide, slipping beneath doorways and window latches, rising through the streets and hills; and the little fishing-town of Scarlock foundered deep. — J.A. Clement

The key question of time travel," my father says, "is this: How do we know what it means to perceive an event as presently occurring, rather than as a memory of a past event? How can we tell present from past? And how do we move the infinitesimal window of the present through the viewfinder at such a constant rate? Why can we see a faraway snow-tipped mountain range, or a jet taking off, or the moon, or the sun, or stars, and not an event that took place a moment ago, let alone a month ago, a year, thirty-three years ago? — Charles Yu

I do not wish to die- There is such contingent beauty in life: The open window on summer mornings Looking out on gardens and green things growing, The shadowy cups of roses flowering to themselves- Images of time and eternity- Silence in the garden and felt along the walls. — A. L. Rowse

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

family? Surely more than genes, eye color, flesh. Family was story: truth and struggle and retribution. Family was time. At the other end of the continent Felix was lying in a hospital bed, asleep, surrounded by kin - Soma and the boys, the ghosts of the Chileans he had known, the disappeared, the still-here. Winkler had a single memory of an infant girl at a window. Faces in a dream, phantoms in the periphery. If he had learned anything it was that family was not so much what you were given as what you were able — Anthony Doerr

If you were looking aside and mentally adding up the hours until the execution of a young killer, all that registered was something dark flashing by. But if you happened to be gazing directly at the window in question and you happened as well to be feeling unprecedentedly calm, four-tenths of a second was more than enough time to identify the falling object as your husband of forty-seven years. — Jonathan Franzen

"Rachel ... you need help."
I laugh and it's the same bitter laugh I remember him giving when we met so many weeks ago. "So do you."
"I love you." Isaiah says it so simply that my heart soars and sinks at the same time.
"I love you," I whisper. "Did you ever think that loving someone could hurt so bad?"
Isaiah shakes his head and stares out the window.
"What's going to happen to us?" I ask. Because I don't know how the two of us can continue forward. Isaiah refuses to let me in. It's sort of cruel. He's brought me close with his stories of his childhood and with his words of love, but he can't relinquish control. I refuse to be with someone who won't treat me as an equal. — Katie McGarry

Do you remember that piece of footage on the local news, just as the first tower comes down, woman runs in off the street into a store, just gets the door closed behind her, and here comes this terrible black billowing, ash, debris, sweeping through the streets, gale force past the window ... that was the moment, Maxi. Not when 'everything changed.' When everything was revealed. No grand Zen illumination, but a rush of blackness and death. Showing us exactly what we've become, what we've been all the time."
"And what we've always been is ... ?"
"Is living on borrowed time. Getting away cheap. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs ... planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering. And meantime the only help we get from the media is boo hoo the innocent dead. Boo fuckin hoo. You know what? All the dead are innocent. There's no uninnocent dead. — Thomas Pynchon

For a long time I've walked through this world with the desire, like in Rear Window, to look into other people's lives because I know that there is a way in which I am the same as so many of the strangers that I see. — Will Oldham

The world outside of me has no meaning independent of my thinking it. (pauses to look) I look out of the window. A garden. Trees. Grass. A young woman in a chair reading a book. I think: chair. So she is sitting. I think: book. So she is reading. Now the young woman touches her hair where it's come undone. But how can we be sure there is a world of phenomena, a woman reading in a garden? Perhaps the only thing that's real is my sensory experience, which has the form of a woman reading- in a universe which is in fact empty! But Immanuel Kant says- no! Because what I perceive as reality includes concepts which I cannot experience through the senses. Time and space. Cause and effect. Relations between things. Without me there is something wrong with this picture. The trees, the grass, the woman are merely- oh, she's coming! (nervously)- she's coming in here-! I say, don't leave!-where are you going? — Tom Stoppard

The music of a popular song now came from the radio as Hawksmoor gazed out of the window; and he saw a door closing, a boy dropping a coin in the street, a woman turning her head, a man calling. For a moment he wondered why such things were occurring now: could it be that the world sprang up around him only as he invented it second by second and that, like a dream, it faded into the darkness from which it had come as soon as he moved forward? But then he understood that these things were real: they would never cease to occur and they would always be the same, as familiar and as ever-renewed as the tears which he had just seen on the woman's face. — Peter Ackroyd

As an artist you organize your life so that you get a chance to paint, a window of time, but that's no guarantee you'll create anything worth all your effort. You're always haunt by the idea you're wasting your life. — Chuck Palahniuk

Hold on a minute." She leaned out the window, shouted at the messenger who'd nearly sideswiped her vehicle with his jet-board. "Police property, asshole. If I had time I'd hunt you down and use that board to beat your balls black."
"Darling Eve, you know how that kind of talk thrills and excites me. How can I keep my mind off sex now? — J.D. Robb

One time, my mom told us, 'No TV.' It was 3 P.M., and I was sneaking it in. She put her hand on the back of the TV to see if it was warm, and it was. So she pulled the cord out of the wall, opened the second-floor window, and just threw it out the window. — Akiva Schaffer