"A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive. And then there's music, and girls, and drugs, and homeless people who've read Pauline Kael, and wah-wah pedals, and English potato chip flavors, and I haven't even read Martin Chuzzlewit yet... There's plenty out there."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"Blonde moments only happen around the person you like because you're so distracted by them, that you can't pay attention to what anybody, including them, sais."
— Julius Kellinghusen

"My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly—we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen—or we have an episode like the one I had with the M&M cars back at the Husky station.

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.
"
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"I think humans are only capable of small moments of honesty. Then they get tired and back away. It's something to foster, this ability to keep it for longer. How to keep being honest and aware."
— Laura Pritchett (Sky Bridge: A Novel)

"Live today."
"Yes. Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you're doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out with Perry?"
"What am I doing?"
"You're cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you're stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today that you wasted is gone forever. It's now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you'll never know."
— Jerry Spinelli (Love, Stargirl)

"The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.
It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.
It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning."
— Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove)

"Was that me? Yes it was. Was that him? No it wasn't..
Just a trick of the woods!
Just a moment,
One peculiar passing moment.
Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always 'or'?
Is it never 'and'?
That's what woods are for:
For those moments in the woods...
Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one--!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one.
First a witch, then a child, then a Prince, then a moment--
Who can live in the woods?
And to get what you wish, only just for a moment--
These are dangerous woods..
Let the moment go..
Don't forget it for a moment, though.
Just remembering you had an 'and,' when you're back to 'or,'
Makes the 'or' mean more than is did before.
Now I understand--
And it's time to leave the woods."
— Stephen Sondheim (Into the Woods)

""Learn from the past, prepare for the future, and perform in the moment." (Moments: Making Your Life Count For What Matters Most, Mike Van Hoozer)"
— Mike Van Hoozer

"I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments."
— Samuel Beckett (Krapp's Last Tape)

"I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in."
— Samuel Beckett (Krapp's Last Tape)

""I'm just searchin for moments""
— Ann