"We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Why is love intensified by absence?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays. "
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I wish for a moment that time would lift me out of this day, and into some more benign one. But then I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness; dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say "I'm sorry" until it is as meaningless air."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going. - Henry deTamble"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger

""But you make me happy. It's living up to being happy that's the difficult part.""
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks, I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by abscence? "
— Audrey Niffenegger

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Why is love intensified by absence? - Clare Abshire, The Time Traveler's Wife"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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.”"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.

I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.

I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow al winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Do you ever miss him?
Every day. Every minute.
Every minute, she says.
Yes, it's that way, isn't it?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"But do you think," I persist, "that it’s better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"He is coming, and I am here."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I love. I have loved. I will love."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"The space that I can call mine.. is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from this tiny space.. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I'm afraid of losing you."
Clare smiles. "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."
"But I never want to leave you."
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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

""He made the boxes because he was lonely. He didn't have anyone to love, and he made the boxes so he could love them, and so people would know that he existed, and because birds are free and the boxes are hiding places for the birds so they will feel safe, and he wanted to be free and be safe. The boxes are for him so he can be a bird.""
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"We are walking down the street holding hands. There is a playground at the end of the block, and I run to the swings and I climb on and Henry takes the one next to me facing the opposite direction. And we swing higher and higher passing each other, sometimes in synch and sometimes streaming past each other so fast that it seems we are going to collide. And we laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost or dead or far away. Right now we are here and nothing can mar our perfection or steal the joy of this perfect moment."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"How does it feel?
I feels exactly like one of those dreams in which you suddenly realize that you have to take a test you haven't studied for and you aren't wearing any clothes. And you've left your wallet at home.
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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass... Why has he gone where I cannot follow?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there."
— Audrey Niffenegger

"Is it better to be extremely happy for a short time, even if you lose it, than to be just ok for your whole life?"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

""It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing."
"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"I feel guilty for wanting to avoid the sadness, dead people need us to rememer them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say “I am sorry”, until its as meaningless as air."
— Audrey Niffenegger

"Sometimes I'm happy when he's gone, but I'm always happy when he returns. -Clare"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"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."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"'What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.'"
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)