Ticking Quotes

#1. When people find out what it is that's ticking in them, they get straightened out.

Joseph Campbell

#2. You hope you're saying the right things - but also, as a kid becomes a teenager, you feel like there's a ticking clock for you to tell them everything they need to know.

Reese Witherspoon

#3. Time was our very first king. We all live our lives to the aggressive ticking of the clock. We don't question that our lives are a grid of seconds; even our pulses oblige. No succeeding king can hope to hold this kind of power.

Lauren DeStefano

#4. Do men have a biological clock? I feel like I do. Something is definitely ticking!

Luke Wilson

#5. After a while I get the feeling that Mum and Brian aren't home. Kane either. It's because the house is making so much noise; ticking and creaking as it stretches in the sun. Acting like a house does when nobody's around to see it. It must have forgotten about me.

Kirsty Eagar

#6. The U.S. dollar is in terminal decline. America is tragically bankrupt, unable to pay its lenders without printing the dollars to do so, and enmeshed in an economic depression. The clock is ticking until the dollar faces a crisis of confidence like every other bubble before it.

Peter Schiff

#7. There are always deadlines I have to meet. I don't let myself get too close to the deadlines, so it's not like I'm just sweating bullets or anything if the clock is ticking. I never let myself get in that situation.

Scott Adams

#8. There is no transcendent creator in animism, no god who set the clocks ticking and decides which ones to fix when they falter; nothing exists outside of nature. In other words, my philosophy does not require that I believe in something I cannot experience directly.

Emma Restall Orr

#9. I set the timer. The silent countdown, with the not-so-silent alarm blast at the end of the twenty-minutes commenced. The ticking and tocking started its merciless countdown.

Jazz Feylynn

#10. Gin's the toughest gal I know. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, just like a Timex. Isn't that right, Gin?

Jennifer Estep

#11. I was wrong about you, Izabel," I whisper near her ear; the pain engulfing my insides. "I am the ticking time bomb. I am more unstable than I ever could have imagined. You are discipline, and I am rage. And the only way I know to control the chaos inside, is to eradicate the things that control me.

J.A. Redmerski

#12. We are in the final minutes in the day of our lives, and the clock is ticking. Loudly. I wonder if I am the only one who can hear it.

Nicholas Sparks

#13. His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body.

Haruki Murakami

#14. It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the the kind of delibrate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life.

Terry Pratchett

#15. Harb was a ticking time bomb. It was like watching a preacher with Tourette syndrome. You knew the "Shit! Balls!" was coming at some point during the sermon, probably while he was slapping you on the forehead during a faith healing.

John Corwin

#16. I've learned that a ten-minute shower and the gift of going to the toilet without a ticking clock restores much more in new parents than personal hygiene.

Cecelia Ahern

#17. For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.

Doris Lessing

#18. I could see myself still swimming because I'm really enjoying the sport. But at the same time I have this biological clock that is ticking.

Libby Trickett

#19. Yeah, well things change. Now I want to be here." Another long, seconds-ticking pause. Dust danced in one fading gleam of gold coming through a low window, following long lazy swirls down to the ground. "With you.

Lili St. Crow

#20. I think there is a sort of box-ticking mentality. Not just in the teaching profession. You hear about it in medicine and nursing. It's a lawyer-driven insistence on meeting prescribed standards rather than just being a good doctor.

Richard Dawkins

#21. That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you.

Lev Grossman

#22. That window is closing ... Now, the clock is ticking ... We're not going to have these talks just drag out in a stalling process ... We haven't given away anything - other than the opportunity for us to negotiate

Barack Obama

#23. Time doesn't need to be found, it is in plain sight ticking away loudly all the time. How we use it is the only question.

Don Aslett

#24. Well, not totally because over the years I've probably done 2,700 commercials. So, I'm always ticking. And in a way that was a huge advantage because I was able to take my time choosing my film subjects because I wasn't relying on the fear of not being able to work.

Ridley Scott

#25. Three questions," I said, ticking them off on my fingers as I spoke. "One: do you have a car? Two: do you have plans tonight? And three: how fast can you drive?

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

#26. I was starting to fall in love with Michael Boutilier. Quickly, violently. It was a love that was both armed and dangerous, a ticking time-bomb of destruction that threatened to send my whole world up in flames
and it felt good.

Nenia Campbell

#27. Prioritizing hurt, a reminder that the clock was ticking, that some things would be left undone.

Lisa Genova

#28. Much as I loved doing 'The Big Breakfast,' it almost became automatic. I need something to keep my brain ticking over, something that I have to concentrate on.

Denise Van Outen

#29. I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind.

Anne-Marie Duff

#30. Time keeps ticking away, unaware of the suffering each second generates. Time doesn't care, because if it did, it would've reversed.

Laura Kreitzer

#31. Imagine, for example, birds. When they look out at the world, they have a sense that they are alive. If they are in pain, they can do something about it. If they have hunger or thirst, they can satisfy that. It's this basic feeling that there is life ticking away inside of you.

Antonio Damasio

#32. I love the ritual of drawing up lists, and there's something wonderfully satisfying about ticking tasks off.

Shaida Kazie Ali

#33. I know is, one minute I'm ticking along fine and life is sweet and I want for nothing, and the next I can't wait to get away, I'm all over the place, slipping and sliding again.

Paula Hawkins

#34. I think the main problem people have getting older, whether they know it or not, is that you're closer to dying. And we may fixate on not wanting to look a certain way, but it really is just the clock ticking, that it means, "Oh, I am not immortal!".

Elizabeth Lesser

#35. Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.

John C. Maxwell

#36. The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.

James Patterson

#37. The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

James Thurber

#38. I like knowing what makes people tick and wakes me stop ticking, like clocks.

Jay Coles

#39. I've got a checklist of things I want - including a Brit, a Grammy, an Oscar and a white poodle. Sometimes it gets lonely, and I want a baby too! I'm ticking things off the list.

Joss Stone

#40. The clocks had nothing to do with time but were merely instruments, the clicking and ticking of silver and gold and bronze and pinchbeck arrows, a droll and slapstick rhapsody of lies.

Tabitha King

#41. Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.

Markus Zusak

#42. It's your life, quite possibly your only one. Still you find yourself having a vodka at three a.m., waiting for your pill to kick in, with time ticking through you and your own ghost already wandering among your rooms.

Michael Cunningham

#43. And I love you and your biological clock is ticking so we best get started on that shit.

Kristen Ashley

#44. Just ticking boxes is not the ultimate goal here. Embracing a culture of teamwork and discipline is. And if we recognised the opportunity, the two-minute WHO checklist is just a start.

Atul Gawande

#45. Dude, we both know it's only going to get worse. You're like a ticking sex bomb.

Stacey O'Neale

#46. Honey the party went away quickly, but thats the trouble with ticking and talking.

St. Vincent

#47. What would you do if you were President, and, on the first day of May, the Russian Ambassador presented you with a beautiful cake which emitted a curious ticking noise? Would you plunge it into a pail of water - thus insulting Soviet cuisine in general?

W.C. Fields

#48. There was a ticking time bomb inside my head and the one person I trusted to go in and get it out hadn't shown up or spoken to me for more than a year.

Jim Butcher

#49. The sound of his pencil scratching against paper is as methodical and precise as the ticking of the clock in the corner.

Erin Morgenstern

#50. Trust me, today not even my Timex could take a licking and keep on ticking. Give me a Tonka truck and I'll squash it with my ink pen. (Taryn)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#51. It's a battle with himself and with the ticking finger of the clock.

David Coleman

#52. I find it a little stressful when you're in a really nice studio and you feel time ticking and the bill getting higher.

Yukimi Nagano

#53. It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?

Eileen Atkins

#54. More than the sound of my own beating heart, I miss the sound of a ticking clock. Time passes. It must pass ...

Beth Revis

#55. I struggle with how humankind ended up this way. We made ourselves slaves to money, and we all have to work and be a part of this thing when time is always ticking. And before we know it, a decade has gone by, and did I really get to do everything I wanted to do or say everything I wanted to say?

Jason Mraz

#56. You get 15 minutes of fame, I hear, and I've had 14 minutes. The clock's ticking.

Tim Howard

#57. She swung like a pendulum, ticking away the seconds until she would be dead.

Bernice L. McFadden

#58. Sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks ...

Hunter S. Thompson

#59. Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch time.

Diane Ackerman

#60. For women of a certain age, how do you meet a guy, fall in love, and decide he's the right man to have children with? Your clock's ticking, you're looking at him, and it's a crazy, pressure-filled experience.

Marcia Cross

#61. Sadder than a ticking clock, the moments without you

John Geddes

#62. I want to do things in my community, get out of the public eye, just be normal. You get your 15 minutes of fame, I hear, and I've had 14. The clock's ticking.

Tim Howard

#63. I think every minute you're in a situation like this, your clock is ticking.

Joe Teti

#64. When you do a movie the clock is ticking. It's like a sport.

Benicio Del Toro

#65. He's given me that silver pocket watch and I'd carried it everywhere. I'd loved it--until things got worse and its ticking sounded more like dark footsteps coming up behind me. I loved the watch until I started hating time. And how it ran out.

Dan Gemeinhart

#66. The day you step on the floor the meter is ticking and time is of the essence. You can't really afford to not know what you're doing. So I think the screenplay is a great tool to get everybody on the same page.

Robert Schwentke

#67. As for advice - write as much as you can! Time's ticking, and if you don't throw everything you have into your stories today, you might find yourself on the wrong side of THE END tomorrow!

Darren Shan

#68. As the seconds of our lives are ticking away, you have to realize that life needs to be an adventure.

Hans Zimmer

#69. I do the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking.

Carol Burnett

#70. The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever.

Georg Buchner

#71. Right, so, he has an amazing family, a good job ... " She's ticking his attributes off on her fingers. "He's not a freeloader or a loser, he's loyal and good with kids, and he's fucking amazing in the bedroom. That bastard!

Kristen Proby

#72. My father was a legendary copywriter. He wrote 'Timex Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking.' He named Earth Day 'Earth Day.' It falls on his birthday, April 22. Earth Day, birthday. So the idea came easily.

Sarah Koenig

#73. It's kind of like when a clock battery runs down. The hour and minute hands don't disappear, but they don't keep ticking either. They freeze on the last minute they measured.

Rachel Vincent

#74. And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed's head made Tom shudder - it meant that somebody's days were numbered.

Mark Twain

#75. I wanted to play the part that Mary Kay played, the lawyer who wanted to have baby and felt her clock ticking, because it was something I could relate to.

JoBeth Williams

#76. I don't want to sit on the sidelines and not value the gift of being here. Instead of the idea of time ticking away, the grains of sand running out, I try to think of time as giving me another grain of sand, another gift. So time passing is an accumulation, rather than a diminishing.

Tori Amos

#77. We're creating these massive urban areas in the Third World. It's like you take the entire population of California and put it in one city. Then you remove basic sanitation and medical services, and you have a ticking biological time bomb.

Richard Preston

#78. The lack of affordable, quality child care is a ticking time bomb.

Melanne Verveer

#79. I think any film that is based on life or real events you want it to be accurate but what really matters is that it's truthful. That is not always the same thing. You really want to convey the spirit of the enterprise rather than ticking every single factual box.

Lucinda Coxon

#80. I'm concerned the clock is ticking, and the danger to the American people is still very present.

Adam Schiff

#81. My life is ticking away one subway token at a time - a never ending pirouette of arriving and departing, pushing through turnstiles, nodding goodbye and hello. In eight hours I'll be allowed to turn around and go home.

Rob Payne

#82. For the starship's inhabitants, time now stands still.
For planet Earth, the clock has begun ticking ...

Steve Alten

#83. Their arguments always went like this. The angrier Madeline got, the more freakishly calm Ed became, until he reached a point where he sounded like a hostage negotiator dealing with a lunatic and a ticking bomb. It was infuriating.

Liane Moriarty

#84. Belonging to one party is acceptable. But my days of just ticking the party box are long over. I judge the candidates for who they are.

Rob Lowe

#85. I'm not one of those people who believes in going endlessly around finger wagging and ticking people off for occasional colourful use of language.

Boris Johnson

#86. Directing is physically exciting because there's a ticking clock, you're working with people, it's very social, it's very enjoyable.

Alan Ball

#87. For a long time, my subconscious rested in a dark place, ticking through memories like a jukebox selecting a record ...

Chelsie Shakespeare

#88. You never want to have that ticking clock and know that you had all this time and didn't use it.

J.J. Abrams

#89. There is a drop of blood in the snow before me ... The coyote ... is in estrus ... spurred to let out a bit of herself, sending a message, telling everyone she was now ready, that the clock of her winter was ticking toward spring.

Craig Childs

#90. I had a lot of anger against the way things 'should be done' - conforming to social norms, ticking boxes to gain acceptance. Frustration at the pointlessness and predictability of smalltalk. Oh and a lot of anger about tea, which the British seem to use to avoid actually saying anything.

Rupert Friend

#91. The clock is ticking as nature attempts to absorb the increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Ernest Moniz

#92. I feel totally lucky and happy. I think a lot of young directors feel this way but you sort of, like, have a biological clock that starts ticking and you like feel like you aren't anything until you direct a movie and you need to find yourself and this is how you do it.

Max Winkler

#93. A world of ticking clocks and creaking floorboards.

Donna Tartt

#94. The night breathed through the apartment like a dark animal. The ticking of a clock. The groan of a floorboard as he slipped out of his room. All was drowned by its silence. But Jacob loved the night. He felt it on his skin like a promise. Like a cloak woven from freedom and danger.

Cornelia Funke

#95. Peace is a process, not a shot clock with seconds ticking away and a buzzer at the finish. It's the result of many decisions, not just one. Don't expect otherwise, and don't fail to recognize how far you've risen from the depths of your despair.

Emily March

#96. After I read all the medical journals and watched all the documentaries, I still didn't understand the physical sensation of ticking and where it comes from and what it feels like.

Robin Tunney

#97. People don't understand the virtue of time, until their clock stops ticking.

Steve Goodman

#98. You want to be like a ticking bomb. As calm as possible before the fight, to save energy ... But ready to explode the second you step into the cage.

Alexander Gustafsson

#99. And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.

James Lee Burke

#100. I tell myself I have time. But the itch forming along the back of my neck and across my shoulders says otherwise.
I hate this. It's like I'm racing a clock ticking down to doomsday without knowing how much time I have left.

Erica Cameron