Audrey Niffenegger
There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.Collection: Hallucinations
He thanked her and left the house in the mood of a shipwrecked man who has allowed the rescue ship to pass him by.Collection: Men
I've noticed that Henry needs an incredible amount of physical activity all the time in order to be happy. It's like hanging out with a greyhound.Collection: Order
When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise.Collection: Artist
Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.Collection: Dark
…she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxyCollection: Way
...and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hand on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him - ClareCollection: Rain
When we met I was wrecked, blasted, and damned, and I am slowly pulling myself together because I can see that you are a human being and I would like to be one, too.Collection: Together
I'm at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. (Time Traveler's Wife)Collection: Memories
Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.Collection: Mom
He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.Collection: Alive
Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.Collection: Names
The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.Collection: Art
Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older.Collection: Mean
Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back.Collection: Hair
Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see?Collection: Pain
I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going. - Henry deTambleCollection: Hate
I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house- garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. [...] It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless.Collection: Dream
I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always.Collection: Love
I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.Collection: Taken
He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.Collection: Past
But as usual there's no answer to this. As usual, that's just how it is.Collection: Usual