“In November of 1884, after the election of Grover Cleveland to the presidency, the Times continued to maintain for eleven days that the president-elect was James G. Blaine, Harrison Gray Otis’s candidate.” Joan Didion in “Times Mirror Square” in After Henry on p. 227
“In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jungle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loves; life; London; this moment of June.” (Clarissa) in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf on p. 4
“for history is a pattern of timeless moments. So, while the light fails on a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel, history is now and England.” in “Little Gidding” of The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
“Everything that lives must die. … ‘Why?’ ‘So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever is never precious.’” (Asher’s dad) in My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok on p. 150
“As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said—and calendars” in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on p. 20
“Tradition is the illusion of permanence.” (Harry) in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry
“I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything. You continually force the truth because you’re always looking for something.” in Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
“She is the kind of child who feels a protective tenderness toward her own beginnings. It is part of her strategy in a world of displacements to make every effort to restore and preserve, keep things together for their value as remembering objects, a way of fastening herself to a life.” in White Noise by Don Delillo on p. 103