Robert Musil Quotes

Time seems to stop in certain places.

Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.

All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.

Eternity: a moment standing still for ever.

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always.

I want to stay in some era and remain there like a stupid idiot and see what happens when you try to pause time and not affect it. Not succeed. Not try to think ahead or think behind.

The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels.

I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

It stared at them, and it paused for a hundred years, which transpired in a dozen heart beats.

In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.

He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back in his former life or that one could take one moment and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell, instead of constantly being hurried into the future by good luck or bad.

My head was level with hers as we stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. I don't remember how it ended - if I went to bed or she did. In my memory, it doesn't end. We just stay there, looking at each other, forever.

One of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.

This is the place. Stand still, my steed,- Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been.

I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever.

The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.

Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents' smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glinstening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light - everything so clear and perfect I'm sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.

The camera adds a certain sheen to things. Something about being frozen in time really makes things sparkle.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.

...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.

If you could wish on a star right now, what would you wish for?"I ask him. "For time to stop. "Why?" He shrugs. "Cause I could live forever at this moment.

Reality is always the story of a past, and what I love about the past is—it's over.

A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped.

apparel, n.: There are times I don’t mind doing the laundry, because folding your clothes reminds me of the shape of you.

Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That's why I remember things so well.