Internal Clock Quotes

On Capitol Hill Congress runs by an internal clock: Legislative days are not counted the way calendar days are, and the seasons are marked not by the earth’s orbit but by whether Congress is in session or out.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

I've got absolutely no real perception, properly, of time.

I don't use a Beatmap; I don't use any click track. Any time I count off, it's just in my heart. Sometimes I'll go off the feel of a crowd, like if they way they're bouncing is a little quicker than the song, I might kick up the tempo a little bit. I see where the crowd is at. It's nothing drastic, but all the tempos are from my internal clock.

She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within.

We can't feel the rotation of the planet, but in some ways we can because our bodily systems are reacting to it and have it inherent in them. To me, that's such a powerful thought.

I wake up naturally and begrudgingly around 6:10 A.M. That's wired in so deeply that I wake up at that time no matter where I am, in any time zone. I wish I could sleep later.

Because time isn't something that always proceeds at the same pace. It is we who determine how quickly time passes.

Somehow, Sydney had an internal clock that told her when time was up. I think it was part of her inherent ability to keep track of a hundred things at once. Not me. In these moments, my thoughts were usually focused on getting her shirt off and whether I’d get past the bra this time. So far, I hadn’t.

We were built to be rhythmic.

Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time." "They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires." "Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.

It is easier to wiggle the toes than reset the biological clock, but that is just a belief that is rooted in superstition. If we could understand that the human body is a network of information and energy, then we would see that the same principles apply everywhere in the body.

I think I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not really aware of that time passing. I don't feel that I'm wasteful with time. But I'm not aware of it passing.

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.

Our body is a well-set clock, which keeps good time, but if it be too much or indiscreetly tampered with, the alarm runs out before the hour.

He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

It really gets into your system. All baseball players have this internal clock around February when it starts to kick in and the juices start to flow. I think underestimated how much I was going to miss it.

People used to think that biological clocks were not only mysterious, they were seen almost as miracles. This is no longer the case.

You know how women have this clock when they want to have a baby? I had this clock where I wanted to win a national award by thirty, be at a big press by thirty-five. I was always working with these self-driven goals.