Lateness Quotes

It was always easy, in open and lonely places, to be visited by Panic wilderness fear, but these are the urban fantods here, that come to get you when you are lost or isolate inside the way time is passing, when there is no more History, no time-travelling capsule to find your way back to, only the lateness and the absence that fill a great railway shed after the capital has been evacuated, and the goat-god's city cousins wait for you at the edges of the light, playing the tunes they've always played, but more audible now, because everything else has gone away or fallen silent. . . barn-swallow souls, fasioned of brown twilight, rise toward the white ceilings. . . the are unique to the Zone, they answer to the new Uncertainty. Ghosts used to be either the likeness of the dead or wraiths of the living. But here in the Zone categories have been blurred badly. The status of the name you miss, love, and search for now has grown ambiguous and remote, but this is even more than the bureaucracy of mass absence- some still live, some have died, but many, many have forgotten which they are. Their likenesses will not serve. Down here are only wrappings left in the light, in the dark: images of the Uncertainty. . ." 3:2 ~ Thomas Pynchon

(Golden Globe acceptance speech in the style of Jane Austen's letters):

"Four A.M. Having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding, was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. Miss Lindsay Doran, of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly apppeared to understand me better than I undersand myself. Mr. James Schamus, a copiously erudite gentleman, and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behavior one has lernt to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Canton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a vast deal of money. Miss Lisa Henson -- a lovely girl, and Mr. Gareth Wigan -- a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activitiy until eleven P.M. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due therefore not to the da ~ Emma Thompson

Just being alive should make you late for everything. In case you've never noticed, the dead are always on time. ~ Arlene Ang

William had to be at his office at eight, so his mother got up at seven o' clock to prepare him. He was usually late, or on the verge of lateness. But nothing could hurry him. ~ D.H. Lawrence

They could play an endless game of hide-and -seek in so many rooms and up and down the halls that intersected and turned into dead-end porches and rooms full of wax begonias and elephant's- ears, or rooms full of trunks. She remembered the nights
the moon vine, the everblooming Cape jessamines, the verbena smelling under running feet, the lateness of dancers. ~ Eudora Welty

All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.
Yessir.
But there aint but one reason.
Yessir.
You know what it is?
No sir.
It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be. ~ Cormac McCarthy

She was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late - that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody. ~ J.D. Salinger

There is no lateness in life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Every lateness give us a staggering statistics in negative economic effect ~ Sunday Adelaja

I find lateness exceptionally rude; it's so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person's. ~ Gail Honeyman

The superior thing ... was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual ... ~ Rose Macaulay

Fifty points from Gryffindor for lateness, I think," said Snape. "And, let me see, another twenty for your Muggle attire. You know, I don't believe any House has ever been in negative figures this early in the term: We haven't even started pudding. You might have set a record, Potter. ~ J.K. Rowling

Maybe it's because he never had any control over what was happening to him as a boy. Being late was somehow a way of taking charge. ~ Jan Karon

You get work however you get work, but people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of todays world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don't have to be as good as everyone else if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you. ~ Neil Gaiman

Always late: thus I make you the prisoner of my freedom. ~ Mason Cooley

If age teaches you anything, then one of its lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late ... ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. ~ George Saintsbury

Valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine table that always stood ~ Oscar Wilde

You must however pay attention to the fact that we don't only lose time to lateness. We also lose time to jokes, gossip, empty talks, sleep on duty, social media etc. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Waiting patiently for the fatest bone is a dog's lifestyle. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

And despite the lateness of the hour rushed to her set of encyclopaedias. ~ Dinah Lampitt

When a learner, in the fullness of his powers, comes to great truths unstaled by premature familiarity, he rejoices in the lateness of his lessons. ~ George Iles

Madame Vastra and the others made their return to Paternoster Row by a circumspect route. Strax in particular was keen to intercept any individual he suspected might be following and forcibly remove a variety of their limbs and appendages. But Jenny prevailed upon him that most of the people he singled out were merely walking past. Given the lateness of the hour there were, thankfully, not many.
'What about him?' Strax said, pointing to a figure shambling slowly along on the opposite pavement.
'That old lady is selling lucky heather, and she's heading in a different direction so she's unlikely to be following us.'
'She could be bluffing. And who is this Lucky Heather anyway?'
'It's heather – it's a plant not a person. It's supposed to be lucky.'
'Not if I catch her, it won't be.'
'Strax,' Vastra said simply. 'No. ~ Justin Richards

Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. Too-lateness is potentially every moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when it's no longer too late for anything. Perhaps, even, most times are too early for most things, and most of life has to go by before it's time for almost anything and too late for almost nothing. Nothing to lose, the present moment to gain, the integration with long-delayed Now. ~ Russell Hoban

Leaders should know how fast time runs and how faster they can beat it. Poor leaders run slowly till time overtakes them. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

I see what I want of Love ... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place ...
I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk ... and their need to say: Good Morning ... ~ Mahmoud Darwish

Laziness bears the fruit of hunger and crimes, and those who choose the right path are those willing to pay the price ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

I'm late, the kind of late that suggest I have no regard for the emotional health of my Nigerian parents who probably think I've been kidnapped by the enemies of progress. ~ Uzodinma Iweala