Audrey Niffenegger Quotes

I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: hours spent in airless classrooms, days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading - trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love. -The Night Bookmobile

But you know: you know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have clutched every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried away by goblins.

She looks up at me, still rocking. "Henry ... why did me decide to do this again?"
"Supposedly when it's over they hand you a baby and let you keep it."
"Oh yeah."
Wednesday, September 5, 2001

Do you ever miss him?
Every day. Every minute.
Every minute, she says.
Yes, it's that way, isn't it?

This is good, I'm taking care of myself, I'm not being an idiot, I'm remembering to eat dinner.

Running is many things to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will. As I run I displace air, and things come and go around me, and the path moves like a filmstrip beneath my feet.

I sometimes end up in dangerous situations, and I come back to you broken and messed up, and you worry about me when I'm gone. It's like marrying a policeman.

To lose one child, Mr. DeTamble, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness.

Turning each page is like making a bed, an enormous expanse of paper slowly rises up and over.

One of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.

Time is nothing.

The kissed surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.

I'm going to fall apart...I cant--I don't know what to feel.

There's always world enough and time.

I can appreciate that," says Henry. He's adding to the list. I look over his shoulder. Sex Pistols, the Clash, Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, X, the Mekons, the Raincoats, the Dead Boys, New Order, the Smiths, Lora Logic, the Au Pairs, Big Black, Pil, the Pixies, the Breeders, Sonic Youth ...
Henry, they're not going to be able to get any of that up here." He nods, and jots the phone number and address for Vintage Vinyl at the bottom of the sheet. "You do have a record player, right?"
My parents have one," Bobby says. Henry winces.
What do you really like?" I ask Jodie. I feel as though she's fallen out of the conversation during the male bonding ritual Henry and Bobby are conducting.
Prince," she admits. Henry and I let out a big Whoo! And I start singing "1999" as loud as I can, and Henry jumps up and we're doing a bump and grind across the kitchen. Laura hears us and runs off to put the actual record on and just like that, it's a dance party.

The engagement ring is an emerald, and the dim light from the window is refracted green and white in it. The rings are silver, and they need cleaning. They need wearing, and I know just the girl to wear them.

All of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.

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.

Why is love intensified by absence?

How could you lose me? I'm not going anywhere."
"I worry that you will get tired of putting up with my undependableness and you will leave me."
Clare puts her sketchbook aside. I sit up. "I won't ever leave you," she says. "Even though you're always leaving me."
"But I never want to leave you.

It wasn't quite raining, but it wasn't exactly not raining either. She heard the driver squelching along the path behind her.

Elspeth stood in the sun, letting it pour through her, watching the Kitten sleep. I want you. Elspeth felt depressed. She had never thought of herself as someone who would kill a beautiful white kitten while it napped. But apparently she was that sort of person. Don't you worry, Kitten. I'll put you right back.

There's something about the way she says it that makes me feel strange ... It dawns on me that I am jealous. Jesus. I can't believe I'm feeling jealous of a multimillionaire rock star geezer old enough to be Clare's dad.

He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love ... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly.

No." Valentina closed her eyes. Of course not. "It'll be great, Mouse. We'll have our own apartment, we won't have to work,

He saw things he had no words for.

My reflection in the mirror shows me pink and puffy. I thought pregnant women were to supposed to glow. I am not glowing.

Dream are different than real life but important too.

Roy is my favorite security guy. He's a huge African-American gentleman who always has a beautiful smile on his face. He's the King of the Main Desk, and I'm always glad to arrive at work and bask in his magnificent good cheer.

Sometimes I am glad when Henry's gone, but I am always glad when he come's back

I am so tired. Even the word sleep is a lure, a seduction.

I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.

CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.

Why is love intensified by absence? Long ago, men went to sea and women wait for them, standing on the edge of the water, standing in the horizon for the tiny ship.

I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century.

I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me.

Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home. Clare sighs, turns her head, and is quiet. Hi, honey. I'm home. I'm home.

I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home.

I do get tired of humans

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

And Clare, always Clare.

Not because they're dead. Though unattainability is always attractive.

Clare seems so pleased with the idea of me as a pirate that she forgets that I am Stranger Danger.

We were royally miserable together.

But as usual there's no answer to this. As usual, that's just how it is.

But you make me happy. It's living up to being happy that's the difficult part.

My apartment is basically a couch, an armchair, and about four thousand books.

I feel moderately bad about this whole thing. On the one hand, I am providing myself with urgently required survival skills. Other lessons in this series include Shoplifting, Beating People Up, Picking Locks, Climbing Trees, Driving, Housebreaking, Dumpster Diving, and How to Use Oddball Things like Venetian Blinds and Garbage Can Lids as Weapons. On the other hand, I'm corrupting my poor innocent little self. I sigh. Somebody's got to do it.

Who knew the angel of sex would be so sad? ~ Time Traveler's Wife

I am afraid of the future; it seems to be a big box waiting for me.

Of course.. some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say Fuck It, over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us.

What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.

. . .Tell me, Clare: why on earth would a lovely girl like you want to marry Henry?'

Everything in the room seems to hold its breath. Henry stiffens but doesn't say anything. I lean forward and smile at Mr. DeTamble and say, with enthusiasm, as though he has asked me what flavor of ice cream I like best: 'Because he's really, really good in bed.' In the kitchen there's a howl of laughter. Mr. DeTamble glances at Henry, who raises his eyebrows and grins, and finally even Mr. DeTamble smiles, and says 'Touché, my dear.

In the dim light of the computer screen he seemed otherworldly; Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage.

Time passes and the pain begins to roll in and out as though it's a woman standing at an ironing board, passing the iron back and forth, back and forth across a white tablecloth.

After an hour or so has passed I too am gone and there is only a blanket and a book, coffee cups, and clothing, to show that we were there at all.

You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.

He didn't take care of you; you had to take care of yourself.

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.

I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.

He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing.

Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you're dead?

It's hard to be the one who stays.

he said it quietly but with such intensity that Valentina fell in love with him, though she had no name for the feeling and nothing to compare it to.

Sister Carmelita says animals don't have souls"
"Of course animals have souls, where did she get that idea?"
"She said the Pope says."
"The Pope's an old meanie. Animals have much nicer souls than we do. They never tell lies or blow anybody up."
"They eat each other."
"Well, they have to eat each other; they can't go to Dairy Queen and get a large vanilla cone with sprinkles, can they? "
"They could eat grass."
"So could we, but we don't. We eat hamburgers.

There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

Jessica put out her hand and braced herself against the door jamb. She experienced one of those rare moments when understanding of the world alters and a previously impossible thing is admitted, if not understood.

When you live with a woman you learn something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the shower drain befor you can say "Liquid-Plumr"; that it is not advisable to clip something out of the newspaper before your wife has read it, even if the newspaper in question is a week old; that I am the only person in our two-person household who can eat the same thing for dinner three nights in a row without pouting; and that headphones were invented to preserve spouses from each other's musical excesses.

He thanked her and left the house in the mood of a shipwrecked man who has allowed the rescue ship to pass him by.

Sometimes a thing is - too much - and it has to be isolated and put away." Martin shrugged. "So what's in the boxes is - emotion. In the form of objects."-Her Fearful Symmetry

I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark.

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
- Clare

The house envelops us, watches us, contemplates us as we make love in it for the first time, the first time of many times, and afterward, as we lie spent on the bare floor surrounded by boxes, I feel that we have found our home.

I love. I have loved. I will love.

Now it becomes clear that he's one of those people who is fastidious about his personal appearance but secretly skivenly about everything else

Henry told me once that his doctor thinks he's a new kind of human. You know, sort of the next step in evolution.'
Grandma shakes her head. 'That is just as bad as being a demon. Goodness, Clare, why in the world would you want to marry such a person? Think of the children you would have! Popping into next week and back before breakfast!

Why do I feel like I'm at the edge of a hole?

... she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy

I hear a muffled sniffling noise and glancing at Claire I am astonished to see that tears are streaming across her face toward her ears. I sit up and lean over her.

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.

I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming or I'd have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment.

If you are far away from your lover and family, if you have lost someone, if you feel a bit displaced in your own life: these stories are for you.

Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together.

It comes out so quietly that I have to ask her to repeat it: It's just that I thought maybe you were married to me.

But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.

[S]urrealism is my favorite fun thing. My feeling has always been why make something that merely replicates reality when you can have reality. My own interest lies in things that are impossible in some way.

Everything seems simple until you think about it.

It's living up to being happy that's the most difficult part.

Chicago has so much excellent architecture that they feel obliged to tear some of it down now and then and erect terrible buildings just to help us all appreciate the good stuff.

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)

Henry: How does it feel? How does it feel?

Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that the book you were holding, the red plaid cotton shirt with white buttons, the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost-hole in one heel, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. You are standing, naked as a jaybird, up to your ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. You wait a minute to see if maybe you will just snap right back to your book, your apartment, et cetera. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear, you start walking in any direction, which will eventually yield a farmhouse, where you have the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing will sometimes land you in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.

Everything hurt but she did not mind.

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.

Outside it's a perfect spring night. We stand on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, and Henry takes my hand, and I look at him, and I raise our joined hands and Henry twirls me around and soon we're dancing down Belle Plaine Avenue, no music but the sound of cars whoosing by and our own laughter, and the smell of cherry blossoms that fall like snow on the sidewalk as we dance underneath the tress.

I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.

Time is nothing - Henry's Letter to Claire

Praise means nothing to Mama, she doesn't believe it. Only criticism can flush her cheeks and catch her attention. If I were to say something disparaging she would remember it always.