Quotes By Author: Audrey Niffenegger
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“When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.”
“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.”
“…all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. ”
“You can still be cool when you’re dead. In fact, it’s much easier, because you aren’t getting old and fat and losing your hair.”
“After my mom died she ate my father up completely. She would have hated it. 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. If I had to live on without you I know I could not do it. But I hope, I have this vision of you walking unencumbered, with your shining hair in the sun. I have not seen this with my eyes, but only with my imagination, that makes pictures, that always wanted to paint you, shining; but I hope that this vision will be true, anyway.”
“I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room”
“We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.”
“I sit quietly and think about my mom. It’s funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.”
“one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.”
“The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.”
“I never wanted to have anything in my life that I couldn’t stand losing. But it’s too late for that.”
“Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.”