Quotessence
Home / Topics / Slipping Away Quotes

Slipping Away Quotes

Browse 37 quotes about Slipping Away.

Related topics

PeopleFeels

Slipping Away Quotes

“I had found a woman whom I had not known, and who from day to day had grown stranger to me, yet closer. Now she seemed to be slipping away from me again, into a realm where all names are forgotten, where there is only darkness and perhaps certain unknown laws of darkness. She rejected that dark realm; she came back, but she no longer belonged to me as I had tried to believe. Perhaps she had never belonged to me; who, after all, belongs to whom, and what is it to belong to someone, to belong to one another? Isn't it a forlorn illusion, a convention? Time and again she turned back, as she called it, for an hour, for the duration of a glance, for a night. And always I felt like a bookkeeper who is not allowed to audit. I could only accept without question whatever this unaccountable, unhappy, damned, and beloved creature chose to be and to tell me. ... Loneliness demands a companion and does not ask who it is. If you don't know that, you may have been alone, but you were never lonely.”

LonelinessIllusionRejectionCompanionshipForgettingClosenessSlipping AwayKnowing SomeoneGrowing ApartDistancing Self
Book:The Night in Lisbon
Create image

“One more time? For the audience?" he says. His voice isn't angry. It's hollow, which is worse. Already the boy with the bread is slipping away from me. I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go.”

MomentsHandsVoiceBoysAudienceLetting GoCamerasAngryBreadMore TimeDreadPreparingHolding OnHollowSlippingPeetaHand HoldingSlipping Away
Book:The Hunger Games Trilogy
Create image

“...You can have this whole entire life, with all your opinions, your loves, your fears. Eventually those parts of you disappear. And then the people who could remember those parts of you disappear, and before long, all that's left is your name in some ledger. This...person -- she had a favorite food. She had friends and people she disliked. We don't even know how she died...I guess that's why I like preservation better than history. In preservation I feel like I can keep some of it from slipping away.”

PeopleKnowsFeelsPersonsLongI CanWholeRememberNamesLeftOpinionKnow HowDiedDisappearPreservationSlippingFavorite FoodsSlipping Away
Author:Katherine Howe
Create image

“Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning, she had haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.”

DreamRememberFallLeftMemoriesWeekDyingShadowGhostSomedayFalling ApartNotebookSlippingSlipping Away
Book:Looking For Alaska Special 10th Anniversary Edition
Create image

“William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.”

WritingHeartPlayLossReturnClockPurityThemeOppositionSlippingTime Of Your LifeSlipping Away
Book:The Glass Menagerie
Create image

“Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay on your back paddling in space you might notice your feet had fled your head. You are stretching slowly slowly, getting longer, your joints are slipping away from their usual places. There is no connection between your shoulder and your arm. You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, drifting away now, the centre cannot hold.”

TwoMightEarthLawTurnsFallSpaceBreakFeetArmsHundredConnectionsWeightWho You AreLaysBonesSurfaceMilesShouldersUsualGravityCentreJointsStretchingDriftingSuspendedSlippingPaddlingSlipping AwayLaws Of MotionWeightlessnessDrifting Away
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“Here and gone. That’s what it is to be human, I think—to be both someone and no one at once, to hold a particular identity in the world (our names, our place of origins, our family and affectional ties) and to feel that solid set of ties also capable of dissolution, slipping away, as we become moments of attention.”

ThinkingWorldFeelsHumansMomentsNamesAttentionGoneIdentityParticularCapableOur FamilyTiesSlippingDissolutionSlipping Away
Book:Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
Create image

“There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress I the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what it lost. A dogged and vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.”

IfsWorldHardLostProgressLandBuildingModelsHumbleValuableDullEmpiresSlipsNever EndingSlippingVigilantSlipping AwayReclamation
Author:Graham Swift
Create image

“This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That's not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that's slipping away.”

ThinkingCountryGovernmentAmericaHateFightingWinningPartyIssuesProudRepublicanVoteConstitutionI HateDressesSoldierIraqTerrorTerroristBunchOur TimeNot AfraidRepublican PartyAirportsSlippingSlipping Away
Author:Merle Haggard
Create image

“The green prehuman earth is the mystery we were chosen to solve, a guide to the birthplace of our spirit, but it is slipping away. The way back seems harder every year. If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding, through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. And thus humanity closes the door on its past.”

IfsMenWayYearsMindHumansSelfSeemsEarthPastBeautifulSpiritHumanityUnderstandingDoorsMysteryAchieveDangerCreationEvolutionSurvivalUltimateHarderGreenSpeciesSolveGuidesChosenIronyFulfillmentInstantDoomedSlippingTrajectorySelf UnderstandingBirthplaceSlipping Away
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image