Top 55 Ticking Quotes

When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting – the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness – or into waves of probability.

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.

When people talk about diversity and inclusion, sometimes there’s a bit of an eye-rolling mentality or ticking boxes. But I feel like that’s kind of necessary at times, because the playing fields are not level in the first place.

I like to do the simple things really well, keep the ball ticking.

I think sometimes we rush through countries, ticking off the attractions, but that’s missing the point.

I feel the ticking clock. And at times, I’ve said if I don’t dance, I’d rather die.

There are people working in arts organizations who feel that in recent years there has been a sacrifice of quality and excellence in favor of ticking the right boxes and using the right buzz words because that’s what their masters tell them.

I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once – not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn’t.

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.

I never like to talk about things until we’re already successful. The moment you announce what you’re thinking about doing, you’ve already created a ticking time bomb.

When I’m trying to go to sleep and there are little noises, like a clock ticking or a fan squeaking, it drives me completely insane.

When you do a movie the clock is ticking. It’s like a sport.

I’m ticking things off my list: I had a tumor removed; I had spinal surgery; I had four surgeries in three months.

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.

I don’t feel that clock ticking. I’m not really worried about it. At the same time I would like to have kids someday, but I’m not one of those people who’s dying to have kids.

I never went through a biological clock experience. I never even heard it ticking.

You know what’s really hot? Pop-and-locking, ticking. The moonwalk. Tricks like that.

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent‘s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.

Where once Lego offered a whimsical form of escapism into the world of the subconscious, encouraging creativity and imagination, it’s transformed into a rigid ‘box ticking’ discipline where children are encouraged to build by conformity.

Lucy Kellaway’s columns in the ‘Financial Times’ lend themselves to podcasts because they usually consist of her giving a brisk ticking off to some CEO or subversively wondering whether we’re really as busy as we pretend we are.

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

I know what I want, and the performance side is more important than ticking the money box.

With TV, your structure is determined by the series not the episode. You can have incident without consequence to the character, but keep your eye on the ticking clock of the series.

I had neck surgery and I’m not freaking stupid. I get that my window is smaller than it was and my bump card is ticking.

I like time ticking the way it is.

I was happy to carry on without children because I was completely immersed in my work and my career. I only heard the clock ticking in my late 30s, and when my mother Marion died the year I turned 40 it hit me with such a force that we ended up having IVF, which turned out to be unsuccessful.

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.

You get into such a routine of trying so hard each day and racing between 180 and 220 km., and as soon as you stop, it’s weird, but you start to seize up. So it’s easier if you keep the body ticking over. You just feel better for it come race day.

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.

Wendy and I both wanted kids, but since we were pushing 40, the clock was ticking.

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.

There are comics who treat women fairly appallingly. But I can be great friends with them because I don’t tend to do that ticking of boxes: it can make life too simplistic.

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.

My mum has taught me that the clock is ticking and you have to enjoy every moment – you can not replace time.

You don’t have to be a mathematician to work out that Rory McIlroy is going to have more chances at 25 than I am at 38. The clock is ticking. It would be nicer to be a multiple-major winner than a major winner. But it would be nice to be a major winner, at the minute!

The issue I had with the Lightspeed albums was that usually the main purpose with them was to fulfil really dorky musical goals, like, ‘I wonder if I can do that,’ and it was all very personal. It was more that once I’d finished the goal of what the song was, I was kind of done. It was like ticking boxes.

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

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.

I was always aware of the ticking clock of time, always. I was very aware that I had a lot to do, and I wanted to do those things in the best possible way that I could and probably the biggest way I possibly could.

My career needs to progress. Time’s ticking.

I always like to keep busy, otherwise my brain starts ticking.

It is mutual love, respect and adoration that keep a marriage ticking.

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.

Believe me, happiness is not ticking off Walter Cronkite.

It’s very good for one’s brain and muscular system to work in harmony. If you keep up your playing it just keeps things ticking over.

I do the ‘New York Times’ crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking.

By the time I was 20 I wanted to be in my first Hollywood blockbuster. Achieving that by 24 is amazing, by God‘s grace – but you’re running on a ticking time bomb.

I really love filling out forms – quite fortuitous, really, given that as one of Australia‘s 4 million-ish disabled people, ticking boxes and recording my life for other people is what I’ve spent a fair chunk of my time doing.

The link between young girls, eating disorders and osteoporosis is a ticking time-bomb.

I’ve had other friends who had such a burning desire to have children: they have this biological ticking clock. I don’t know what happened to mine. Nobody ever wound it up.

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.

There’s a clock ticking on the pregnancy thing, but not a clock ticking on adoption.

What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.

You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.

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