You Are Late Quotes & Sayings

Libraries are a force for good. They wear capes. They fight evil. They don't get upset when you don't send them a card on their birthdays. (Though they will charge you if you're late returning a book.) They serve communities. The town without a library is a town without a soul. The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance. Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn't allow that torch to be extinguished. — Libba Bray

In referring to her earlier statement that he had was not her type because he was "a dollar short when it came to maturity and a day late when it came to peace."
I may have been wrong about that," she conceded. "You are a complicated man, but happily complicated. You have found a way to be at home with the world's confusion, a way to embrace the chaos rather than struggle to reduce it or become its victim. It's all part of the game to you, and you are delighted to play. In that regard, you may have reached a more elevated plateau of harmony than ... ummph. — Tom Robbins

We will endeavor to halt the Industrial Revolution before it is too late, to regulate population at a reasonable point, to eventually replace quantitative money with qualitative money, to decentralize, to conserve resources. The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to controlled proliferation of identical objects and persons. You are making soap, you don't give a shit who buys your soap, the more the soapier. And you don't give a shit who makes it, who works in your factories. Just so they make soap. — William S. Burroughs

Nonsense. Every month it's the same routine, and when you are late, I am late. Do you think I want to get my chestnuts roasted for your incompetence? — R. Cooper

It is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for forgiveness. There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it wherever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel. — Henry B. Eyring

Boys are told since they're little that pretty things are good. Pretty things equal happy things. So when we grow up and see a shiny pretty thing, we're drawn like moths to a flame. We keep flying toward the light until it's too late. You know, like that Sleeping Beauty chick with the spinning wheel? — Rachel Van Dyken

Greed is a strange, strange sin.
All you want to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, acquire attention. The running mantra is "I want, I want, I want" but that quickly turns to "I need, I need, I need."
Suddenly there just isn't enough time for friends, for family, for anyone. Your goal is to acquire and to make sure what you acquire stays acquired. Your life depends on it. You don't see truth because the truth is shadowed by enormous homes, incredibly fast cars, in lavish spending. Your life no longer belongs to you, but you are blind to it all because those around you are seeking the same.
So you shuffle along at an impossible rate, and you pass the real world around you.
But what you'll come to realize, altogether too late, is that it's never enough.
It's simply never enough — Amelie Fisher

There's a lot of women out there, some of whom are my age who've never been married and some who have been married and would like to be married again but think their ship has sailed, and I'm like, 'Oh no, honey, let Miss Niecy show you it is never too late for love!' — Niecy Nash

Ryan stared at me as I pulled my phone out to see who was calling at this late
hour. "You have the Fraggle Rock theme song as your ring tone," he said, with a
bemused look on his face. "You are so weird. — Diana Rowland

You know it's never too late to shoot for the stars regardless of who you are — Chad Kroeger

Shahara-"
"Zzzt," she said, holding her hand up. "Wasting time here. I won't even hear it. You go. I go. It's my sister's life on the line and I out-shoot and am pretty sure I outfight you, too." "I think we came up pretty even on that score." "But I am the better shot." He gave her a grudging glare. "I concede. However, I think I can take you when I'm sober." She took the bottle out of his hand. "Good. I'm going to throw this out." "Uh!" He reached for it. Shahara danced away from him and had the bottle upside down in the sink before he could catch her. He tried to get it out of her hands, but it was too late. "You are an evil, mean woman."

-Syn & Shahara — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You're late," said the third bouncer. "The others have already arrived and are
setting up." Ian grunted non-committedly when what he wanted to say was: Of course
we're late. We had to intercept the real catering van. We had to take out the people inside. We
had to hack your stupid staff list ID system. — Stephen Hunt

The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed. — Robert A. Heinlein

At first, there is something you expect of life. Later, there is what life expects of you. By the time you realize these are the same, it can be too late for expectations. What we are being, not what we are to be. They are the same thing. — Shirley Hazzard

Sunsets are great. Sunrises are a mixed bag. You either got up way too early or went to bed way too late. — Matt Dillon

Claiming "the budget can't allow it" reminds me of when you walk into a restaurant at a civilized hour like ten o'clock and they say "the kitchen is closed." For years I would hear this, and think, "damn, just a little too late, oh well, thank you, I guess it's Denny's again."
And then one day it hit me: kitchens don't close. Just as at home, at a certain point in the night, I stop using the kitchen
but at three in the morning, if I want to, I still have the ability to go downstairs and "re-open" the kitchen by turning on the stove and opening the refrigerator! Restaurants are not banks; at the stroke of ten an enormous airlock doesn't seal off the kitchen and render the preparation of food an utter impossibility./ No, kitchens can open and budgets are what certain people say they are. — Bill Maher

Indeed, there are recurrent hints in the Bible that the Israelites had feelings of guilt about taking the Canaanites' land,147 a curious adumbration of Israeli twinges about homeless Palestinian Arabs in the late twentieth century. The Israelites, however, hid any remorse in the belief that the conquest was a pious act: it is 'because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you'. — Paul Johnson

Some of the tactics that are used by Foxconn and other companies throughout China is, if you are late, if you violate one of the small rules, some of the punishment is that you have to copy down quotations from the chairman of Foxconn: you have to write out confessions explaining why you were late and promising never to do it again. — Charles Duhigg

Then you wake up in Barstow California. Another dissociative fugue. It's like time traveling. It's late November now. What ever happened at teresa is a mystery to you. In Godforsaken Barstow, where the golden state shits itself into the desert, people are eatting each other. Has it always been this way? — Lost Zombies

But common sense comes too late, because Logan is now moving away from the counter and marching in my direction.

"Hey, gorgeous." He slides in the seat across from me and places a chocolate-chip muffin on the table. "I got you a muffin."

Damn it, I guess he'd noticed me right when he'd walked in.

"Why?" I ask in suspicion, and without saying hi.

"'Cause I wanted to get you something, and you already have coffee. Ergo, muffin."

I raise one eyebrow. "Are you trying to buy your way into my good graces?"

"Yup. And excellent pun, by the way."

"I wasn't punning. My name just happens to be a homonym."

His blue eyes gleam as he downright smolders at me. "I love it when you talk homonyms to me."

"Uh-huh. — Elle Kennedy

How are you?" Charlie asks. She's turned to me wearing this grave expression, her features all set in a row. I expected her to be pissy about my being nonresponsive all weekend, or at least about my being late this morning, but if she is, she's not acting like it.
"Um, fine. Are we going?"
Charlie glances back at Olivia.
"He's an asshole," Olivia says.
"She's a bitch," Charlie says. — Rebecca Serle

There are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late — Charles Bukowski

I think people overplay the 'Saturday Night Live' schedule. I mean, yeah, it can be some late hours. But the late hours are usually only one or two nights out of the week. You might have a crazy six-day week, but you'll work three weeks, and then you get a week off work. I'd take most jobs if it was hard work and then I got a week off. — Hannibal Buress

Don't worry, I plan on living a long time."
"Why are you making a bucket list, then?"
"Because if you wait until you're really dying, it's too late. — Gayle Forman

You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Roadblock #5: It's Unpredictable
By and large, human beings don't like surprises. I know that I don't. Okay, maybe I like that rare piece of unexpected good news or a letter from a friend or a thoughtful thank-you. But I'm willing to bet that people in funny hats jumping out of dark closets are responsible for more heart attacks than expressions of unbridled delight. When the doorbell rings late at night, I'm under no illusion that it's the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol!
This, most likely, goes back to our caveman past when a big, exciting surprise was apt to be something like an 800-pound,snarling, saber-toothed tiger about to rip the head from our shoulders. Surprises were usually bad news. (Think about this the next time you're crouching in the dark in somebody's front hall closet with their raincoats and umbrellas.) — Paul Powers

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm. — Edward Hirsch

Live every minute as if you are late for the last train. — Colson Whitehead

Tell TAMMY it will be all right. She says what will be all right? I say whatever you are crying about. She says that is exactly what she's crying about. That everything is all right. That the world isn't ending. That we'll never tell each other how we really feel because everything is okay. Okay enough to just sit around, being okay. Okay enough that we forget that we don't have long, that it's late, late in this universe, and at some point in the future, it's not going to be okay. Sometimes — Charles Yu

I wound up writing a review that asserted her greatness but also said that this was not her career album, and that she could and would do even better than this.

I was in Atlanta, late at night, leaving a piano bar (don't ask), when my cell phone rang and I distractedly picked it up.

'Hello?'

'Peter Cooper?'

The words came out as one: 'Petercooper?'

'Yes.'

'You better get your ass over here right now.'

'Who is this?'

'Petercooper, it's Leeannwomack. Where the hell are you?'

'I'm in Atlanta?'

'Why?'

That one was hard to answer. I paused to ponder.

'Doesn't matter. Get your sorry ass over here right now.'

'I can't. I'm in Atlanta.'

'Well, get in your car and drive to Nashville. 'Cause I'm gonna give you three swift kicks to the groin. — Peter Cooper

She isn't a storm or a leader or a king or a war or anyone whose life and death makes noise. The problem is words. There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells taht make your skin real. It's too late now
even if we could say "Shut up" or "Where's my dinner?" in the first language, the real language, the words weren't born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruption, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really "stay" are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough. — Helen Oyeyemi

Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"
"Well [ ... ] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."
"And when you have waited - -has it made you sure? — James Baldwin

Like a cross between Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions and Janice Lee's Damnation, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing is at once smart and slyly unsettling. It is expert at creating a quietly building sense of dread while claiming to do something as straightforward as describe lost films - like those conversations you have in which you realize only too late that what you actually talking about and what you think you are talking about are not the same thing at all. With Rombes, Two Dollar Radio deftly demonstrates why it is rapidly becoming the go-to press for innovative fiction. — Brian Evenson

Guys pit female rappers against each other because female rappers - if you haven't noticed of late - are a lot more interesting than guys. — Angel Haze

If you are on time you are a slave, if you are late you are free — SK

There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it. They create so much gravitational pull there's no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example, and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion - that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it's too late. — Jodi Picoult

We played checkers," said Czernobog, hacking himself another lump of pot roast. "The young man and me. He won a game, I won a game. Because he won a game, I have agreed to go with him and Wednesday, and help in their madness. And because I won a game, when this is all done, I get to kill the young man, with a blow of a hammer."
The two Zoryas nodded gravely. "Such a pity," Zorya Vechernyaya told Shadow. "In my fortune for you, I should have said you would have a long life and a happy one, with many children."
"That is why you are a good fortune-teller, said Zorya Utrennyaya. She looked sleepy, as if it were effort for her to be up so late. "You tell the best lies. — Neil Gaiman

This was a respect in which he paid due homage to the wise old spirit of the late Emiel Kroger, that romantically practical Teuton who used to murmur to Pablo, between sleeping and waking, a sort of incantation that went like his: Sometimes you will find it and other times you won't find it and the times you don't find it are the times when you have got to be careful. Those are the times when you have got to remember that other times you will find it, not this time but the next time, or the time after that, and then you've got to be able to go home without it, yes, those times are the times when you have got to be able to go home without it, go home alone without it ... — Tennessee Williams

The word friend is a label anyone can try on. You decide who is best suited to wear it. Choose wisely. The most dangerous among us come dressed as angels and we learn too late they are the devil in disguise. — Carlos Wallace

Oh, My God..." Even as he saw the face and heard that voice say "Crow..." he was throwing himself backward out of the shaft. Then the top of the elevator car blew out and the air was filler with shrapnel, everybody hit the deck, and crow grabbed his crossbow, yelling, "Get back! It's him, the vampire!" But it was too late. The vampire rose with the grip of a single beautiful hand, almost levitating toward them, his power and eyes and smile and terrible beauty so alien but so familiar, so pale but so solid, so horrible but so magnetic. And he came closer and closer. "Get back," ordered crow, and the Team started to obey. "Too late," the vampire said, halting them with the voice. "You've let me get too close." Crow raised his crossbow all the way then saied: "Hold it there." The thing laughed and said, "Are you joking?" "Stop!" said Crow. And the vampire smiled and showed his big teeth and said: "Stop me... — John Steakley

I've been having this really weird anxiety dream about arriving too late or too early, and the people in charge are like, 'You have to leave! You have to go back to the hotel and get ready!' And I use the wrong exit, and I'm running down the red carpet in pyjamas, like, 'No! Don't look at me!' — Florence Welch

You cannot come to Christ unless the Spirit of God brings you. But what if you ignore His warnings? Then you are in the gravest danger, for some day God will no longer be speaking to you. Then it will be too late. Come to Christ while there is still time. Christ, God's greater Ark, stands ready to welcome you to safety today. — Billy Graham

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss - absolute bliss - as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle into every finger and toe? ... — Katherine Mansfield

Oh, Lucia the captain said softly, you are so little and so lovely. how I would have liked to have taken you to Norway and shown you the fiords in the midnight sun, and to China- what you've missed, Lucia, by being born too late to travel the Seven Seas with me! And what I've missed, too. — R.A. Dick

It's certainly not too late to change to the winning side. But you know, you also have the freedom to stay just where you are. That's what it means to be an American. That's the miracle of America. Freedom to believe means the freedom to believe the wrong thing, after all. Just as freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent. — Neil Gaiman

What you see in living systems, and in genetic systems, is that the genes are already there, having arisen in the course of time, and when they are needed they become activated. If they had to be invented, the time would be too late. — Jonas Salk

There's always a question when you invest. Are you too early, are you too late, or are you just right? And there was a lot of hype about life sciences, around the sequencing of the human genome and a lot of people concluded that's not really there. But by the way, there was a lot of hype around the digital revolution just about the time of 2000 and the human genome, and it turns out that some of the world's biggest, most powerful companies are the survivors post that crash. — Juan Enriquez

Excuse me, Ms. Matthews; you are going to be late for class if you don't get going. Can you read the map, or are you already lost?" the stern voice of the secretary pulled me out of my stupor.
"Um, no, I can read," I said, sheepishly, still unable to take my eyes off the mysterious boy staring back.
"Of course, you can read," she said sharply, snapping my entranced head back to reality. "Now, get to class. — Rachel Higginson

Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light. — Caitlin Moran

Woulda, shoulda, coulda. It's human nature to assume that we have that sort of control over what happens to us, but the truth is ... life happens and sometimes you're too late. Hell, sometimes you're too early. Sometimes you make the wrong choice just like sometimes you make the right one. The only time people ever use those three is when things don't go the right way. People don't question themselves when things are going well. They question themselves when things have gone to hell. — Rachel Van Dyken

I am late,' she said, 'I know that I am late. So many little things have to be done when you are alone, and I am not yet accustomed to being alone,' she added with a pretty little sob which reminded me of a cut-glass Victorian tear-bottle. She took off thick winter gloves with a wringing gesture which made me think of handkerchiefs wet with grief, and her hands looked suddenly small and useless and vulnerable. — Graham Greene

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust. — John Betjeman

You're not behind in life. There's no schedule or timetable that we all must follow. It's all made up. Wherever you are right now is exactly where you need to be. Seven billion people can't do everything in exactly the same scheduled order. We are all different with a variety of needs and goals. Some get married early, some get married late, while others don't get married at all. What is early? What is late? Compared with whom? Compared with what? Some want children, others don't. Some want a career; others enjoy taking care of a house and children. Your life is not on anyone else's schedule. Don't beat yourself up for where you are right now. It's YOUR timeline, not anyone else's, and nothing is off schedule. — Emily Maroutian

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well- read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
SO I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
-Kurt Vonnegut "A man without a country" p. 132 — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You can call me, Tyler, Miss Dandridge." "That would hardly be appropriate, Mr. Atherton. I do see, however, you are a soldier." "Yes, ma'am. A lieutenant in the Texas Third Cavalry." Tyler's gaze never left Hannah's. William felt a strange sense of jealousy wash over him when Hannah offered Tyler a smile. "Then perhaps you would allow me to call you . . . Lieutenant." Tyler laughed and gave a sweeping bow. "You can call me anything, ma'am, so long as it ain't late to the dinner table." His men laughed, as well, and even Hannah appeared amused. — Tracie Peterson

I love these sort of documentaries, which you might turn on late on a Saturday night - like, say, 'The Alma Cogan Story.' But they are ripe for spoofing, because the presenters are always so serious and anxious to make themselves look like rather attractive and interesting people. — Peter Capaldi

Gus, its never too late for redemption. The scars never run too deep, so deep that God is not there."
"I should know this. I minister to scarred people everyday. It just feels impossible when the scars are your own, or are those of the person you wronged so fully"
"It feels different when its you"
"Why is it the good you do seems like a drop in the bucket but the evil spreads for miles & miles — Lisa Samson

Receive this cross of ash upon your brow
Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday's cross;
The forests of the world are burning now
And you make late repentance for the loss.
But all the trees of God would clap their hands,
The very stones themselves would shout and sing,
If you could covenant to love these lands
And recognize in Christ their lord and king.
He sees the slow destruction of those trees,
He weeps to see the ancient places burn,
And still you make what purchases you please
And still to dust and ashes you return.
But Hope could rise from ashes even now
Beginning with this sign upon your brow. — Malcolm Guite

The best=laid plans, one's most fastidious contingency strategies have revealed themselves in the cold light of day to be laughably inadequate, no match for the happenstance that seems of late only to promise death, mayhem, poverty, flood. And here you are, having spent all that time protecting your home from the oncoming elements only to find that it has been shored up with crackers. — David Rakoff

Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For awhile. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's to late because you are maintaining it now,straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Intention is powerful because it addresses the question of why? Why are you getting up early to work out? Why are you staying late at work to checkup on your employees? You can have intention without a clearly defined goal and accomplish great things, but if you have a goal without intention, you'll usually fall well short of your dreams. — Stan Beecham

If you have been told that you are late and unreliable more than once, then not only do you lack punctuality, but you also lack decency and seriousness, which is certainly very annoying. — Auliq Ice

No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late. — Natalie Babbitt

I dare say you are planning on a late repentance. You do not know what you are doing. You are planning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is 'Able to save completely those who come to God through him' (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, 'Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you' (Proverbs 1:24-26).

Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God whenever you please. — J.C. Ryle

Our first night in the house, my wife and I were lying in bed. I was thanking God for my blessings. Thanking God for not having to pull aside a dining room curain to have my children near - that they were right down the hall, asleep in their Superman underwear, their little chests rising and falling to the pulse of their dreams.
I thought how some blessings are fickle guests. Just when we think they're here to stay, they pack their bags and move. When we're in the midst of blessing, we think it's our due - that blessing lasts forever. Next thing you know we're sitting helpless beside a hospital bed. All we're left with is a name on a wall, a toy in a desk, and memories that haunt our sleep.
Sometimes we come to gratitute too late. It's only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.
- chapter 2 — Philip Gulley

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. — G.K. Chesterton

sometimes
the apology
never comes
when it is wanted

and when it comes
it is neither wanted
nor needed

-you are too late — Rupi Kaur

Leela: Why are we listening to them? It is a waste of time.
The Doctor; It is difficult to know what will be a waste of time until after the time has been wasted, by which time it is too late. So predicting what will be a waste of time is something of a waste of time. Unless it gives you pleasure of course when it probably doesn't count as a waste of time.
Leela (yawning): I am sorry I did not hear what you said, Doctor.
The Doctor (smiling): That was a waste of time then. — Chris Boucher

The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said, the higher you go, the fewer women there are. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Daddy, I'll be fine. Smalley says some people are late bloomers, that's all.
Actually, what she'd said was, 'Tis a marvellous bud that opens its petals at midnight - not so eager as the weeds of daybreak.
I figured that translated to, Just because you're not a slut like Veronica, doesn't mean you'll end up alone. — Cecily White

There is a lot of talk about "rigged games" as of late. Big government is the most insipid of all "rigged games". There is no choice available to the public allowing it to avoid a big over-arching government. You can always chose not do business with a big corporation. Corporations that are distasteful can be avoided. A big, powerful, government bent on intrusion cannot be avoided. — A.E. Samaan

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

The mind carries you with it, away from what you are supposed to do, toward things that cannot be explained rationally, toward difficulty, lack of clarity, late-afternoon light. — Donald Barthelme

It's too late," she said, her voice trembling. "You are not the beautiful innocent vagabond walking toward me under the dogwood blossoms, with his trunks and his head full of worthless notions. And I am not the beloved, cherished ladies' maid ... — Geraldine Brooks

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

It's true I've been hurt a few times after revealing myself. There are people who lie in wait for the vulnerable and pounce as a way to feel powerful. But God forgive them. I'm willing to take the occasional blow to find people I connect with. As long as you're willing to turn the other cheek with the mean ones, vulnerability can get you a wealth of friends. Can you imagine coming to the end of your life, being surrounded by people who loved you, only to realize they never fully knew you? Or having poems you never shared or injustices you said nothing about? Can you imagine realizing, then, it was too late? How can we be loved if we are always in hiding? — Donald Miller

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

"You — Carol Ann Duffy

What he does not yet understand is that whatever makes a woman strong is the reason that certain men will love her, even if behind her strengths there hide great weaknesses. This he will learn from You. He will learn that You are bubbly, funny, and sweet only because You have all Your weaknesses. But by then it will be too late. — Francoise Sagan

For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is CERTAIN, that nothing bad will ever happen to ME. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there ARE. But let's not talk about them, eh? By the time the consequences catch up to you, it's too late, isn't it, Montag? — Ray Bradbury

Moving is easy, exciting, an adventure - when you're young. Later, not so much. I love Massachusetts, my old home. Sometimes, late at night, I even study the real estate ads in my old hometown. But it's not even a fantasy. My parents are both gone. The world I left doesn't exist anymore. Neither does the person I was. — Susan Estrich

The whole game is undone, this nightmare of evolution, and you are exactly where you were prior to the beginning of the whole show. With a sudden shock of the utterly obvious, you recognize your own Original Face, the face you had prior to the Big Bang, the face of utter Emptiness that smiles as all creation and sings as the entire Kosmos - and it is all undone in that primal glance, and all that is left is the smile, and the reflection of the moon on a quiet pond, late on a crystal clear night. — Ken Wilber

Consistently turning up for meetings late, is a statement saying you have no respect for the person you are meeting or for the purpose of the meeting, or both. You are sending a clear message that this person or the reason for your meeting is not important to you. — Archibald Marwizi

Mitch you are fighting it so hard and you know you are going to lose. It's like a willow root. It quietly makes its way, winding and twisting around you until it's too late and there is no way to stop it. Even if you cut it off, that root will continue to grow, shooting out more roots until it takes over.

~Beckett — S.M. Stryker

So what's the big emergency?" Jeffrey says. He jogs down the aisle of the Pink Garter toward where Christian and I are sitting, waiting for Angela, who uncharacteristically late. "I thought we weren't going to meet this week because we like, you know, spent all weekend together. I'm kind of sick of you people."
"Glad to see that you decided to grace us with your presence, anyway," Christian says. — Cynthia Hand

He'd solved the problem you see - and that's the way some people are. They are ceaselessly finding ways of getting to grips with the world, of surmounting certain antipathies so as to apply themselves to it that little bit more. It's quite admirable really, how they refuse to let anything come between them and the rest of it - Oh, the rest of it! Sort of there, sort of hovering there all the time. Different ideas come to me now and again - strategies I suppose that might inculcate a little more compatibility. I just don't know if I'll ever get the hang of it if you want to know - as a matter of fact I think I've left it a little too late to cultivate the necessary outlook. — Claire-Louise Bennett

I think Francis at half form is better than anybody else by 50%, you know? I think it's just that he has never ... he has a late pick of the things that are ambitious enough for him. — John Milius

In a matter of a moment the amount of sand in the upper part of the hour-glass had dwindled dramatically, the tiny grains were rushing through the opening, each grain more eager to leave then the last, time is just like people, sometimes it's all it can do to drag itself along, but at others, it runs like a deer and leaps like a young goat, which, when you think about it, is not saying much, since the cheetah is the fastest of all the animals, and yet it has never occurred to anyone to say of another person He runs and jumps like a cheetah, perhaps because that first comparison comes from the magical late middle ages, when gentlemen went deer-hunting and no one had ever seen a cheetah running or even heard of its existence. Languages are conservative, they always carry their archives with them and hate having to be updated. — Jose Saramago

Success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity. — Cynthia Heimel

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been?
I guess far away.
Yes you were. Too far away.
They sat in silence.
You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning.
No.
You did.
He smiled at that.
You looked as if you didnt anyone, she said.
But this are the ones who need the most, he said. Don't you know that?
I do know, she said. Too late. — Susan Minot

Father," she said late one night. "I can't keep up. Our goats are dying. We're going to have to ask the neighbors for help."
"Have we ever done that before?" he said.
"We've never needed help before," said Capable.
"Well I'm against it," he said. "If we haven't done it before, it stands to reason that this time is the first time we've done it, which means that, relative to what we've done in the past, this is different, which I am very much against, as I always have been, as you well know. I have consistently been very very consistent about this. — George Saunders

Spectacles, on that strong-featured face ... and his hair mussed as if he had been tugging absently on the front locks. All that combined with a plenitude of muscles and masculine virility was astonishingly ... erotic. "When did you start wearing those?" Daisy managed to ask.
"About a year ago." He smiled ruefully and removed the spectacles with one hand. "I need them to read. Too many late nights poring over contracts and reports."
"They ... they are very becoming."
"Are they?" Continuing to smile, Swift shook his head, as if it had not occurred to him to wonder about his appearance. — Lisa Kleypas

You have no idea of what you are doing to me," he warned.
She smiled. "Are you trying to frighten me? Because it is not working."
"No, I can see that. Just as well because it is too late."
"For you or for me?"
"For me," he said. "I am lost."
"That makes two of us."
"Then I am not lost, after all. You have found me. — Amanda Quick

I've only have time for one last lesson...
"I have you," Demandred finally growled, breathing heavily. "Who ever you are, I have you. You cannot win."
"You didn't listen to me," Lan whispered.
One last lesson. The hardest...
Demandred struck, and Lan saw his opening. Lan lunged forward, placing Demandred's sword point against his ow side and ramming himself forward onto it.
"I did not come here to win", Lan whispered, smiling, "I came here to kill you. Death is lighter that a feather."
Demandred's eyes opened wide, and he tried to pull back. Too late. Lan's sword took him straight through the throat.
The world grew dark as Lan slipped backward off the sword. He felt Nynaeve's fear and pain as he did, and he sent his love to her. — Robert Jordan

Okay kids," Ralphie said, trailing me. "Don't be too late. Don't do any drugs, drive smart and even if all the other kids are doing it, think twice. If you're going to be over your curfew then make sure you call your Daddies or we'll get worried. — Kristen Ashley

The things that don't happen to us that we'll never know didn't happen to us. The nonstories. The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer mauled another car instead of yours. The woman you didn't meet because she couldn't get a taxi to the party you had to leave early from. All of life is a series of nonstories if you look at it that way. We just don't know what they are. — Anita Shreve

You can become unhinged and cut loose from the world. You can believe you are a permanent outsider. But the innocence of a child will bring you back and give you the shield of joy with which to protect yourself. I have learned this late in life but not too late. It's never too late. — Michael Connelly

That's mine!" Kostya said in a still somewhat strangled voice as he lurched forward.

Gabriel reached for the box but Misha held tight to it, backing up a couple of steps as he eyed us.

"You are who?" he asked.

"Konstantin Fekete, wyvern of the black dragons. The phylactery belongs to me."

"The black dragons," Misha said slowly. "Surely they all died centuries ago?"

"Not all. There are still a few of us. And we will regain what we once held-"

Everyone in the room except Cyrene chanted in unison, "-but was taken from us. We will face death to restore to the sept the pride, the glory, the true essence, of what it once was."

Kostya glared at us all.

"Don't get him going about that, please," Aisling said from where she stood behind us, leaning against Drake. "It's late, and once he starts, it can take hours. — Katie MacAlister

I do sit down every day and make myself write. I want 2,000 words every day or 3 single-space pages a day. I think if you are on a deadline, you have to be disciplined. If you turn things in late, you will find yourself without a contract. — Michelle Moran

An aphrodisiac will disappear,
delusional, like permanence or wealth -
a shimmering, as if love were a ghost -
and yet my passion for you seethes and sears
without an end. Late April leaves can't crave
caress of dew, sunlight's sweet splash, more than
I pine for your embrace, us turned to one;
when harsh reversals scar, the thought of you will salve
like summer wind in autumn; deep red blood
surging along with mine, staid genes worked hot
from your electric charms, as all my moods
succumb to your sweet fire, and perfect wit.
Now you are all I live for - loving you -
in fleeting world of lies, you are the truth. — Lauren Lipton

Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creatures endures. A fear of time running out. — Mitch Albom