Something Wicked This Way Comes Time Quotes

[Tom Fury]: "Nightshade. That's quite a name."

"And only fitting," said Will Halloway. "I was born one minute before midnight, October thirtieth. Jim was born one minute after midnight, which makes it October thirty-first." (1.17-1.18)

It seemed when the first stroke of nine banged from the big courthouse clock all the lights were on and business humming in the shops. But by the time the last stroke of nine shook everyone's fillings in his teeth, the barbers had yanked off the sheets, powdered the customers, trotted them forth; the druggists fount had stopped fizzing like a nest of snakes, the insect neons everywhere had ceased buzzing, and the vast glittering acreage of the dime store with its ten billion metal, glass, and paper oddments waiting to be fished over, suddenly blacked out. (4.2)

Midnight then and the town clocks chiming on toward one and two and then three in the deep morning and the peals of the great clocks shaking dust off old toys in high attics and shedding silver off old mirrors in yet higher attics stirring up dreams about clocks in all the beds where children slept. (11.1)

Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour?

For, he thought, it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. […] Doctors say the body's at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You're the nearest to dead you'll ever be save dying. (14.11-14.12)

Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. (14.20)

They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight spheres of evil gas tied by mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. (15.20)

A bad thing happened at sunset.

Jim vanished. (16.1-16.2)

The Illustrated Man nodded toward the library.

"The janitor's clock. Stop it."

The witch, mouth wide, savoring doom, wandered off into the marble quarry. (43.76-43.78)

If Will didn't hurry, those legions from Time Future, all the alarms of coming life, so mean, raw, and true you couldn't deny that's how Dad'd look tomorrow, next day, the day after the day after that, that cattle run of possible years might sweep Dad under! (49.3)

[Charles Halloway]: "It's late. Must be midnight straight up."

Obediently, the City Hall clock, the Baptist church clock, the Methodist, the Episcopalian, the Catholic church, all the clocks, struck twelve. The wind was seeded with Time. (54.137-54.138)