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| 00:00:00h | He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to bring him any help. | Swann's Way | Marcel Proust | @westrowc |
| 00:00:00h | Gately can hear the horns and raised voices and U-turn squeals way down below on Wash. that indicate it's around 0000h., the switching hour. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 00:00:00h | Cartridges not allowed after 0000h., to encourage sleep. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 00:00:00h | We have heard the chimes at midnight. | Henry IV Part 2 | William Shakespeare | sipowicz |
| 00:00:00h | "But wait till I tell you," he said. :We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before" | Ulysses | James Joyce | terribleman |
| 00:00:00h | I took her hand in mine, and bid her be composed; for a succession of shudders convulsed her frame, and she would keep straining her gaze towards the glass. 'There's nobody here!' I insisted. 'It was YOURSELF, Mrs. Linton: you knew it a while since.' 'Myself!' she gasped, 'and the clock is striking twelve! It's true, then! that's dreadful!' | Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte | JLM |
| 00:00:00h | Francisco. You come most carefully upon your hour. Bernardo. 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco. | Hamlet | William Shakespeare | Purush |
| 00:00:00h | Francisco. You come most carefully upon your hour. Bernardo. 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco. | Hamlet | Shakespeare | Purush |
| 00:00:00h | Hamlet. What hour now? Horatio. I think it lacks of twelve. Marcellus. No, it is struck. | Hamlet | William Shakespeare | Purush |
| 00:00:00h | "As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray, dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, crept quietly out of his house." | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | amandaaugust |
| 00:00:00h | I exist. I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. The clock once belonged to my great-grandmother (a woman called Alice) and its tired chime counts me into the world. I'm begun on the first stroke and finished on the last when my father rolls off my mother and is plunged into a dreamless sleep, thanks to the five pints of bitter he has drunk in the Punchbowl with his friends, Walter and Bernard Belling. | Behind the Scenes at the Museum | Kate Atkinson | |
| 00:00:00h | It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | JK Rowling | Habibti |
| 00:00:00h | To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed an believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. | David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | justlola |
| 00:00:00h | "Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's, Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; The sun is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;" | A Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day | John Donne | MarkPatton |
| 00:00:00h | Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.' | The Raven | Edgar Allan Poe | M Marsh |
| 00:00:00h | It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. I am calm. All is sleeping. Nevertheless I get up and go to my desk. I can't sleep. ... | Molloy | Samuel Beckett | Gaber |
| 00:00:00h | But in the end I understood this language. I understood it, I understood it, all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters. It told me to write the report. Does this mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know. I shall learn. Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining. | Molloy | Samuel Beckett | Gaber |
| 00:00:00h | I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters too. Well then: at night. No, it's important to be more . . . On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India's arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. | Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie | kwillz |
| 00:00:00h | Midnight had come upon the crowded city. The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse; the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness; the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child - midnight was upon them all.' | Oliver Twist | Charles Dickens | frankie01 |
| 00:00:00h | "Midnight," you said. What is midnight to the young? And suddenly a festive blaze was flung Across five cedar trunks, snow patches showed, And a patrol car on our bumpy road Came to a crunching stop. Retake, retake! | Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | SalParadise650 |
| 00:05:00h | E.M. Security, normally so scrupulous with their fucking trucks at 0005h., is nowhere around, lending weight to yet another cliché. If you asked Gately what he was feeling right this second he'd have no idea. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 00:07:00h | It was seven minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon | Benedicte |
| 00:15:00h | At twelve-fifteen he got out of the van. He tucked the pistol under the waistband of his trousers and crossed the silent, deserted street to the Hudston house. He let himself through an unlocked wooden gate onto a side patio brightened only by moonlight filtered through the leafy branches of an enormous sheltering coral tree. He paused to pull on a pair of supple leather gloves. | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 00:25:00h | Charlotte remembered that she had heard Gregoire go downstairs again, almost immediately after entering his bedroom, and before the servants had even bolted the house-doors for the night. He had certainly rushed off to join Therese in some coppice, whence they must have hurried away to Vieux-Bourg station which the last train to Paris quitted at five-and-twenty minutes past midnight. And it was indeed this which had taken place. | Fruitfulness | Emile Zola | Cindeesan |
| 00:30:00h | It was half-past twelve when I returned to the Albany as a last desperate resort. The scene of my disaster was much as I had left it. The baccarat-counters still strewed the table, with the empty glasses and the loaded ash-trays. A window had been opened to let the smoke out, and was letting in the fog instead. | The Amateur Cracksman | E.W. Hornung | Wrennie |
| 00:40:00h | We sat in the car park till twenty to one/And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. | A Subaltern's Love Song | John Betjeman | degrus |
| 00:45:00h | At the thought he jumped to his feet and took down from its hook the coat in which he had left Miss Viner's letter. The clock marked the third quarter after midnight, and he knew it would make no difference if he went down to the post-box now or early the next morning; but he wanted to clear his conscience, and having found the letter he went to the door. | The Reef | Edith Wharton | Cindeesan |
| 00:50:00h | The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big hamper, and said he hoped nothing would be found broken. George said that if anything was broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him. He also said he was ready for bed. | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | JLM |
| 00:56:00h | It was 12:56 A.M. when Gerald drove up onto the grass and pulled the limousine right next to the cemetery. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 01:00:00h | ‘What time is it now?’ she said. ‘About one o’clock’. ‘In the morning?’ Herera’s friend leered at her. ‘No, there’s a total eclipse of the sun’. | Freedom. ch 2, p 115 hardback edn (UK) | Jonathan Frantzen | Bronte |
| 01:00:00h | He didn’t know what was at the end of the chute. The opening was narrow (though large enough to take the canary). He dreamed that the chute opened onto vast garbage bins filled with old coffee filters, ravioli in tomato sauce and mangled genitalia. Huge worms, as big as the canary, armed with terrible beaks, would attack the body. Tear off the feet, rip out its intestines, burst the eyeballs. He woke up, trembling; it was only one o’clock. He swallowed three Xanax. So ended his first night of freedom. | Atomised | Michel Houellebecq | terribleman |
| 01:00:00h | The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adele, whose head leant against my shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies sought their chambers. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | JLM |
| 01:00:00h | Last night of all, When yon same star that's westward from the pole Had made his course t'illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one - | Hamlet | William Shakespeare | Irv |
| 01:00:00h | I'm the only one awake in this house on this night before the day that will change all our lives. Though it's already that day: the little luminous hands on my alarm clock (which I haven't set) show just gone one in the morning | Tomorrow | Graham Swift | Eugenius |
| 01:00:00h | The station was more crowded than he had expected to find it at - what was it? he looked up at the clock - one o'clock in the morning. What in the name of God was he doing on King's Cross station at one o'clock in the morning, with no cigarette and no home that he could reasonably expect to get into without being hacked to death by a homicidal bird? | The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 01:00:00h | [The Jossers are sleepless and thinking about their son] It was the thirtieth of May by now. One am on the thirtieth of May 1940. Quite a famous date on which to be lying awake and staring at the ceiling. Already in the creeks and tidal estuaries of England the pleasure-boats and paddle-steamers were casting their moorings for the day trip to Dunkirk. And, over on the other side, Ted stood as a good a chance as anyone else. | London Belongs to Me | Norman Collins | outofideas |
| 01:00:00h | 1.00 am. I felt the surrounding quietness suffocating me. | Sister | Rosamund Lupton | Arti |
| 01:00:00h | I looked attentively at her, as she put that singular question to me. It was then nearly one o'clock. All I could discern distinctly by the moonlight was a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue. | The Woman in White | Wilkie Collins | alimison |
| 01:06:00h | When he woke it was 1:06 by the digital clock on the bedside table. He lay there looking at the ceiling, the raw glare of the vaporlamp outside bathing the bedroom in a cold and bluish light. Like a winter moon. | No Country for Old Men | Cormac McCarthy | Irv |
| 01:12:00h | It was 1:12 am when Father arrived at the police station. I did not see him until 1:28 am but I knew he was there because I could hear him. He was shouting, 'I want to see my son,' and 'Why the hell is he locked up?' and, 'Of course I'm bloody angry.' | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 01:15:00h | The ghost that got into our house on the night of November 17, 1915, raised such a hullabaloo of misunderstandings that I am sorry I didn't just let it keep on walking, and go to bed. Its advent caused my mother to throw a shoe through a window of the house next door and ended up with my grandfather shooting a patrolman. I am sorry, therefore, as I have said, that I ever paid any attention to the footsteps. They began about a quarter past one o'clock in the morning, a rhythmic, quick-cadenced walking around the dining-room table. [super-embarrassing: just saw that my first thought (Brooke) was already mentioned in the comment section-- someone else's first thought] | My Life and Hard Times: "The Night the Ghost Got In" | James Thurber | lemonthyme |
| 01:15:00h | Lily Chen always prepared an 'evening' snack for her husband to consume on his return at 1.15am. | Sour Sweet | Timothy Mo | backandtotheleft |
| 01:16:00h | At sixteen past one, they walked into the interview room. | Nothing Gold Can Stay | Dana Stabenow | martinblank |
| 01:17:00h | "The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions." It's the end of the world..... | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | Rob McInroy |
| 01:17:00h | At that moment (it was seventeen minutes past one in the morning) Lieutenant Bronsfield was preparing to leave the watch and return to his cabin, when his attention was attracted by a distant hissing noise. | A voyage round the moon | Jules Verne | |
| 01:17:00h | The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window. What is it? she said. He didnt answer. He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass. He dropped to one knee and raised the lever to stop the tub and then turned on both taps as far as they would go. She was standing in the doorway in her nightwear, clutching the jamb, cradling her belly in one hand. What is it? she said. What is happening? | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | Knap |
| 01:20:00h | "Well!" she said, looking like a minor female prophet about to curse the sins of the people. "May I trespass on your valuable time long enough to ask what in the name of everything bloodsome you think you're playing at, young piefaced Bertie? It is now some twenty minutes past one o'clock in the morning, and not a spot of action on your part." | Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit | P.G. Wodehouse | frustratedartist |
| 01:20:00h | Then it was 1.20 am, but I hadn't heard Father come upstairs to bed. I wondered if he was asleep downstairs or whether he was waiting to come in and kill me. So I got out my Swiss Army Knife and opened the saw blade so that I could defend myself. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 01:22:00h | It was 1:22 when we found Dad's grave. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 01:28:00h | It was 1:12 am when Father arrived at the police station. I did not see him until 1:28 am but I knew he was there because I could hear him. He was shouting, 'I want to see my son,' and 'Why the hell is he locked up?' and, 'Of course I'm bloody angry.' | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 01:30:00h | "Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, "Regard that woman ..." | Rhapsody on a Windy Night | TS Eliot | |
| 01:30:00h | Around 1:30 A.M. the door opened and I thought it was Karla, but it was Bug, saying Karla and Laura had gone out for a stag night after they ran out of paint (p.290 in Flamingo paperback edition, 1996) | Microserfs | Douglas Coupland | jrsd |
| 01:30:00h | The late hour helped. It simplified things. It categorized the population. Innocent bystanders were mostly home in bed. I walked for half an hour, but nothing happened. Until one thirty in the morning. Until I looped around to 22nd and Broadway. | Gone Tomorrow | Lee Child | The Golux |
| 01:30:00h | The radio alarm clock glowed 1:30 a.m. Bad karaoke throbbed through walls. I was wide awake, straightjacketed by my sweaty sheets. A headache dug its thumbs into my temples. My gut pulsed with gamma interference: I lurched to the toilet. | Ghostwritten | David Mitchell | Gesine22000 |
| 02:00:00h | Get on plane at 2 A.M., amid bundles, chickens, gypsies, sit opposite pair of plump fortune tellers who groan and (very discreetly) throw up all the way to Tbilisi. | Bech: A Book, Appendix A, III | J. Updike | Bronte |
| 02:00:00h | Somewhere behind a screen a clock began wheezing, as though oppressed by something, as though someone were strangling it. After an unnaturally prolonged wheezing there followed a shrill, nasty, and as it were unexpectedly rapid, chime - as though someone were suddenly jumping forward. It struck two. I woke up, though I had indeed not been asleep but lying half-conscious. | Notes from the underground | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | AggieH |
| 02:00:00h | It's a minute or two to 2.02 | Oliver Hereford | ||
| 02:00:00h | Lady Macbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. Act V, Scene i [Yes, you have plenty of entries for 2:00 a.m.--but this is quintessential.] | Macbeth | Shakespeare | Allison Berryhill |
| 02:00:00h | "The middle of the night?" Alec asked sharply."Can you be more definite?" "About two. Just past" Daisy noted that he expressed no concern for her safety. | Dead in the water | Carola Dunn | stjerome1st |
| 02:00:00h | As two o'clock pealed from the cathedral bell, Jean Valjean awoke. | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo | kbergen |
| 02:00:00h | When all had grown quiet and Fyodor Pavlovich went to bed at around two o'clock, Ivan Fyodorovich also went to bed with the firm resolve of falling quickly asleep, as he felt horribly exhausted.' | The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | KatherineACooke |
| 02:02:00h | There was a young lady of Crewe Who wanted to catch the 2.02 Said a porter, "Dont worry, Or hurry, or scurry It's a minute or two to 2.02" | Oliver Hereford | ||
| 02:05:00h | After a few moments he opened the front door, and slipped out, shutting it very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about ten minutes his valet appeared, half dressed, and looking very drowsy. ‘I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis,’ he said, stepping in; ‘but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?’ ‘Five minutes past two, sir,’ answered the man, looking at the clock and yawning. ‘Five minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work to do.’ ‘All right, sir.’ ‘Did any one call this evening?’ ‘Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went away to catch his train.’ ‘Oh! I am sorry I didn’t see him. Did he leave any message?’ ‘No, sir, except that he would write to you.’ ‘That will do, Francis. Don’t forget to call me at nine tomorrow.’ ‘No, sir.’ The man shambled down the passage in his slippers. Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the yellow marble table, and passed into the library. He walked up and down the room for a quarter of an hour, biting his lip, and thinking. Then he took the Blue Book down from one of the shelves, and began to turn over the leaves. ‘Alan Campbell, 152, Hertford Street, Mayfair.’ Yes; that was the man he wanted. | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | LaGracia |
| 02:07:00h | At 2:07 a.m. I decided that I wanted a drink of orange squash before I brushed my teeth and got into bed, so I went downstairs to the kitchen. Father was sitting on the sofa watching snooker on the television and drinking whisky. There were tears coming out of his eyes. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 02:07:00h | But I couldn't sleep. And I got out of bed at 2.07 am and I felt scared of Mr. Shears so I went downstairs and out of the front door into Chapter Road. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 02:07:00h | Saturday, 17 November — 2.07 a.m. I cannot sleep. Ben is upstairs, back in bed, and I am writing this in the kitchen. He thinks I am drinking a cup of cocoa that he has just made for me. He thinks I will come back to bed soon. I will, but first I must write again. | Before I Go to Sleep | S. J. Watson | LaGracia |
| 02:10:00h | After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, shutting the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the bell. In about five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking very drowsy. I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in; "but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?" "Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock and blinking. "Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at nine to-morrow. I have some work to do." "All right, sir." "Did any one call this evening?" "Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then be went away to catch his train." "Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?" "No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not find you at the club." | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | CSSinNYC |
| 02:15:00h | It did. When the alarm rang at two fifteen, Lew shut it off, snapped on the little bedside lamp, then swung his feet to the floor to sit on the edge of the bed, holding his eyes open. | The Night People | Jack Finney | shelleyk |
| 02:17:00h | "What time is it now?" He turned her very dusty alarm clock to check. "Two-seventeen," he marveled. It was the strangest time he'd seen in his entire life. "I apologize that the room is so messy," Lalitha said. "I like it. I love how you are. Are you hungry? I'm a little hungry." "No, Walter." She smiled. "I'm not hungry. But I can get you something." "I was thinking, like, a glass of soy milk. Soy beverage." | Freedom | Jonathan Franzen | gelijojo & AyeshaS |
| 02:20:00h | The night of his third walk Lew slept in his own apartment. When his eyes opened at two twenty, by the green hands of his alarm, he knew that this time he'd actually been waiting for it in his sleep. | The Night People | Jack Finney | shelleyk |
| 02:21:00h | It was the urge to look up at the sky. But of course there was no sun nor moon nor stars overhead. Darkness hung heavy over me. Each breath I took, each wet footstep, everything wanted to slide like mud to the ground. I lifted my left hand and pressed on the light of my digital wristwatch. Two-twenty-one. It was midnight when we headed underground, so only a little over two hours had passed. We continued walking down, down the narrow trench, mouths clamped tight. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 02:30:00h | Inc, I tried to pull her off about 0230, and there was this fucking...sound | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 02:30:00h | At about half past two she had been woken by the creak of footsteps on the stair ...........Well what had she called | The Little Stranger | Sarah Waters | |
| 02:30:00h | It is 2.30am and I am tight. As a tick, as a lord, as a newt. Must write this down before the sublime memories fade and blur. | Any Human Heart | William Boyd | |
| 02:30:00h | "Get into the mood, Shirl!" Lew said. "The party's already started! Yippee! You dressed for a party, Harry?" "Yep. Something told me to put on dinner clothes when I went to bed tonight." "I'm in mufti myself: white gloves and matching tennis shoes. But I'm sorry to report that Jo is still in her Dr. Dentons. What're you wearing, Shirl?" "My old drum majorette's outfit. The one I wore to the State Finals. Listen, we can't tie up the phones like this." "Why not?" said Harry. "Who's going to call at 2:30 a.m. with a better idea? Yippee, to quote Lew, we're having a party! What're we serving, Lew?" "Beer, I guess. Haven't got any wine, have we, Jo?" "Just for cooking." | The Night People | Jack Finney | Shelleyk |
| 02:31:00h | And then I woke up because there were people shouting in the flat and it was 2.31 am. And one of the people was Father and I was frightened. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | Aggieh |
| 02:45:00h | 0245h., Ennet House, the hours that are truly wee. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 02:46:00h | PISTOL RANGE, OCEAN NAS, VIRGINIA BEACH, VA 2:46 A.M. The chain drive whirred and the paper target slid down the darkened range, ducking in and out of shafts of yellow incandescent light. At the firing station, a figure waited in the shadows. As the target passed the twenty-five-foot mark, the man opened fire: eight shots-rapid, unhesitating. The target reached the firing station; the chain drive thunked and stopped. The range fell silent. Cholly Granger leaned into the light. Eight bullet holes punched a tight group through the belly of the target. He pulled the paper target down, balled it, threw it in the wastebasket. Then he removed the empty slide from his 9-mm automatic pistol, slipped in a loaded one, chambered a live round. He eased the hammer down and flicked the safety on. Then he snapped the overhead off and stood a moment in the pitch-black range, as though preparing his eyes-and his soul-for the darkness to come. | Patriots | Steve Sohmer | Cindeesan |
| 02:46:00h | Vicki shoved her glasses at her face and peered at the clock. Two forty-six. 'I don't have time for this' she muttered, sttling back against the pillows, heart still slamming against her ribs. | Blood Lines | Tanya Huff | DennisPreston |
| 02:55:00h | Then the silence was gently broken, their heads tilting as the first hint of sound touched their ears. Each step across the asphalt brought it clearer though it remained subdued: a quiet orchestral background to a softly tinkling piano. Her voice pleased with the coincidence, Jo said, "'Tea for Two.' It was playing when I came down for milk tonight, and now the tape's come around again." Harry said, "Music. Playing here all by itself. In the godforsaken middle of the night. Some sort of symbolism here, Lew, if I was awake enough to figure it out." "It's the way the world will end, Harry. Recorded cocktail music nuclear-powered to play on for centuries after all life has been destroyed. Selections from 'No, No, Nanette,' throughout eternity. That do you for 2:55 a.m.?" | The Night People | Jack Finney | ShelleyK |
| 02:56:00h | It was 2:56 when the shovel touched the coffin. We all heard the sound and looked at each other. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 03:00:00h | I slam the phone down but it misses the base. I hit the clock instead, which flashes 3 a.m. | Songs from the Other Side of the Wall | Dan Holloway | Murakami Lover |
| 03:00:00h | Once I saw a figure I shall never forget. It was three o'clock at night, as I was going home from Blacky as usual; it was a short-cut for me, and there would be nobody in the street at this time of night, I thought, especially not in this frightful cold. | I'm Not Stiller, Third Notebook, p. 153 (Penguin Modern Classics ed, 1983 | Bronte | |
| 03:00:00h | Once I saw a figure I shall never forget. It was three o'clock at night, as I was going home from Blacky as usual; it was a short-cut for me, and there would be nobody in the street at this time of night, I thought, especially not in this frightful cold. | I'm Not Stiller | Max Frisch (omitted this in posting) | Bronte |
| 03:00:00h | It was six untroubled days later – the best days at the camp so far, lavish July light thickly spread everywhere, six masterpiece mountain midsummer days, one replicating the other – that someone stumbled jerkily, as if his ankles were in chains, to the Comanche cabin’s bathroom at three A.M. | Nemesis, p 219 hardback edn | Philip Roth | Bronte |
| 03:00:00h | Few time references are as powerful as Housman’s Eight O’Clock: He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck. Enough said. | Eight O'Clock | A.E. Housman | Hackwriter |
| 03:00:00h | Few time references are as powerful as Housman’s Eight O’Clock: He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck. Enough said. | Eight O'Clock | A.E. Housman | Hackwriter |
| 03:00:00h | Schact clears his mouth and swallows mightily. 'Tavis can't even regrout tile in the locker room without calling a Community meeting or appointing a committee. The Regrouting Committee's been dragging along since may. Suddenly they're pulling secret 0300 milk-switches? It doesn't ring true, Jim. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 03:00:00h | When Sophie awoke, it was 3:00 a.m. | Desperate Characters | Paula Fox | Oskar101 |
| 03:00:00h | At three am I was walking the floor and listening to Katchaturian working in a tractor factory. He called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and the hell with it. | The Long Goodbye | Raymond Chandler | the lady in the lake |
| 03:00:00h | You hearken, Missy. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I’ve got all my faculties as well as ever I had in my life. I know all my property and where the money’s put out. And I’ve made everything ready to change my mind, and do as I like at the last. Do you hear, Missy? I’ve got my faculties.” | Middlemarch | George Eliot | Knox10 |
| 03:00:00h | Early mornings, my mother is about, drifting in her pale nightie, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. Water begins to boil in the kettle; it starts as a private, secluded sound, pure as rain, and grows to a steady, solipsistic bubbling. Not till she has had one cup of tea, so weak that it has a colour accidentally golden, can she begin her day. She is an insomniac. Her nights are wide-eyed and excited with worry. Even at three o'clock in the morning one might hear her eating a Bain Marie biscuit in the kitchen | Afternoon Raag | Amit Chaudhuri | |
| 03:00:00h | But every morning, even if there's been a nighttime session and he has only slept two hours, he gets up at six and reads his paper while he drinks a strong cup of coffee. In this way Papa constructs himself every day. | The Elegance of the Hedgehog | Muriel Barbery | Parisa |
| 03:00:00h | "She died this morning, very early, about three o'clock." | The Voyage Out | Virginia Woolf | lucelucy |
| 03:00:00h | But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work -- and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. | The Crack-Up | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Lawnovel |
| 03:00:00h | What's the time?" said the man, eyeing George up and down with evident suspicion; "why, if you listen you will hear it strike." George listened, and a neighbouring clock immediately obliged. "But it's only gone three!" said George in an injured tone, when it had finished. | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | JLM |
| 03:00:00h | It was three in the morning when his taxi stopped by giant mounds of snow outside his hotel. He had not eaten in hours. | Solar | Ian McEwan | JohnDoh |
| 03:00:00h | Roused from her sleep, Freya Gaines groped for the switch of the vidphone; groggily she found it and snapped it on. 'Lo,' she mumbled, wondering what time it was. She made out the luminous dial of the clock beside the bed. Three AM. Good grief. | The Game Players of Titan | Philip K Dick | Proto Plasm |
| 03:00:00h | At three o' clock in the morning Eurydice is bound to come into it. After all, why did I sit here like a telegrapher at a lost outpost if not to receive messages from everywhere about the lost Eurydice who was never mine to begin with but whom I lamented and sought continually both professionally and amateurishly. This is not a digression. Where I am at three o' clock in the morning - and by now every hour is three o' clock in the morning - there are no digressions, it's all one thing. | The Medusa Frequency | Russell Hoban | Proto Plasm |
| 03:00:00h | According to her watch it was shortly after three o'clock, and according to everything else it was night-time. | The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 03:00:00h | 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. Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! 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. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! [...] Three A.M. That’s our reward. Three in the morn. The soul’s midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair…. Why? | Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury | LdyGray |
| 03:00:00h | "Three A.M. That's our reward. Three in the morn. The soul's midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And train arrives at an hour of despair. . .why?" | Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury | Laura Treacy Bentley |
| 03:00:00h | In a real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o'clock in the morning. | The Crack-Up | F. Scott Fitzgerald | podrushka |
| 03:05:00h | On the Sunday before Christmas she awoke at 3:05 a.m. and though: Thirty-six hours. Four hours later she got up thinking: Thirty-two hours. Late in the day she took Alfred to the street-association Christmas party at Dale and Honey Driblett’s, sat him down safely with Kirby Root, and proceeded to remind all her neighbors that her favorite grandson, who’d been looking forward all year to a Christmas in St. Jude, was arriving tomorrow afternoon. | The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | nightwriter |
| 03:10:00h | Love again; wanking at ten past three | High Windows | Philip Larkin | silentprinter |
| 03:10:00h | I really don't care, you said. I don't care about any of it. Whoever finds them can have them. They can have all the money that's in the wallet. They're welcome to it. It's not as if there's that much left in either of the accounts anyway. Well, except for the one account. Actually, there's quite a lot in that account. Actually, maybe you could phone about that one. The goldcard one. Would you mind? But the other one I don't care about. Oh, God. And my credit card. I think my credit card was in there too. I wrote down the words credit card and said that if they wouldn't let me cancel them I'd demand that they registered the loss so you couldn't be charge for anything beyond the time of my calling them up. I looked at the clock. It was ten-past three. | The Whole Story and Other Stories | Ali Smith | cindeesan |
| 03:15:00h | Above the door of Room 69 the clock ticked on at 3:15. The motion was accelerating. What had once been the gymnasium was now a small room, seven feet wide, a tight, almost perfect cube. The walls plunged inward, along colliding diagonals, only a few feet from their final focus... | Manhole 69 (short story) | J.G. Ballard | secretcinema |
| 03:17:00h | He turned to the monitors again and flicked through the screens, each one able to display eight different camera mountings, giving Kurt 192 different still lives of Green Oaks at 3.17 a.m. this March night | What Was Lost | Catherine O'Flynn | DennisPreston |
| 03:25:00h | "It was 3:25 a.m. A strange thrill, to think I was the only Mulvaney awake in the house." | We Were the Mulvaneys | Joyce Carol Oates | straill |
| 03:30:00h | "Let's go to sleep," I say. "Look at what time it is." The clock radio is right there beside the bed. Anyone can see it says three-thirty. | Whoever was using this bed | Raymond Carver | nilpferd |
| 03:30:00h | At half past three a single bird | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 03:30:00h | At half-past three A.M. he lost one illusion : officers sent to reconnoitre informed him that the enemy was making no movement. | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo | kbergen |
| 03:30:00h | It's 3:30 A.M. in Mrs. Ralph's finally quiet house when Garp decides to clean the kitchen, to kill the time until dawn. Familiar with a housewife's tasks, Garp fills the sink and starts to wash the dishes. | The World According to Garp | John Irving | jgluzifer |
| 03:30:00h | Now, look. I am not going to call Dr. McGrath at three thirty in the morning to ask if it's all right for my son to eat worms. That's flat. | How to Eat Fried Worms | Thomas Rockwell | martinet |
| 03:40:00h | His bedside clock shows three forty. He has no idea what he's doing out of bed: he has no need to relieve himself, nor is he disturbed by a dream or some element of the day before, or even by the state of the world. It's as if, standing there in the darkness, he's materialized out of nothing, fully formed, unencumbered. He doesn't feel tired, despite the hour or his recent labours, nor is his conscience troubled by any recent case. In fact, he's alert and empty-headed and inexplicably elated. With no decision made, no motivation at all, he begins to move towards the nearest of the three bedroom windows and experiences such ease and lightness in his tread that he suspects at once he's dreaming or sleepwalking. If it is the case, he'll be disappointed. Dreams don't interest him; that this should be real is a richer possibility. And he's entirely himself, he is certain of it, and he knows that sleep is behind him: to know the difference between it and waking, to know the boundaries, is the essence of sanity. | Saturday | Ian McEwan | Kitpill |
| 03:43:00h | "The clock says 3.43am. The thermometer says it's a chilly fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. The weatherman says the cold spell will last until Thursday, so bundle up and bundle up some more. There are icicles barring the window of the bat cave." | Ghostwritten | David Mitchell | philipmatthews |
| 03:51:00h | I lacked the will and physical strength to get out of bed and move through the dark house, clutching walls and stair rails. To feel my way, reinhabit my body, re-enter the world. Sweat trickled down my ribs. The digital reading on the clock-radio was 3:51. Always odd numbered at times like this. What does it mean? Is death odd-numbered? | White Noise | Don DeLillo | |
| 03:58:00h | The clock atop the clubhouse reads 3:58. | Underworld | Don Delillo | Sal Paradise650 |
| 03.47:00h | I stayed awake until 3:47. That was the last time I looked at my watch before I fell asleep. It has a luminous face and lights up if you press a button so I could read it in the dark. I was cold and I was frightened Father might come out and find me. But I felt safer in the garden because I was hidden. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 04:00:00h | Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare | Aubade (poem) | Philip Larkin | silentprinter |
| 04:00:00h | The night before Albert Kessler arrived in Santa Teresa, at four in the morning, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez got a call from Azucena Esquivel Plata, reporter and PRI congresswoman. | 2666, p 583, hardback UK edn | Roberto Bolano | Bronte |
| 04:00:00h | When he noticed that the chefs from the grand hotels and restaurants - a picky, impatient bunch - tended to move around from seller to seller, buying apples here and broccoli there, he asked if he could have tea available for them. Tommy agreed, and the chefs, grateful for a hot drink at four in the morning, lingered and bought. | The Tea Rose | Jennifer Donnelly | thecommonreader |
| 04:00:00h | "Nothing happened," he said wanly. "I waited, and about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light." | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Sarah Churchwell |
| 04:00:00h | Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. | Aubade | Philip Larkin | jeven |
| 04:00:00h | I looked at the clock and it was (yes, you guessed it) four am. I should have taken comfort from the fact that approximately quarter of the Greenwich Mean Time world had just jolted awake also and were lying, staring miserably into the darkness, worrying ..." | Watermelon | Marian Keyes | |
| 04:00:00h | Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. | Aubade | Philip Larkin | |
| 04:00:00h | The Birds begun at Four o'clock— Their period for Dawn— | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 04:00:00h | Suddenly, he started to cry. Curled up on the sofa he sobbed loudly. Michel looked at his watch; it was just after 4am. On the screen a wild cat had a rabbit in its mouth. | Atomised | Michel Houellebecq | terribleman |
| 04:00:00h | It's four in the morning, the end of December. I'm writing you now just to see if you're better. New York is cold but I like where I'm living. There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening | Famous Blue Raincoat (from 'Stranger Music') | Leonard Cohen | Blaydon |
| 04:00:00h | Certain facts were apparent: dark; cold; thundering boots; quilts; pillow; light under the door – the materials of reality - but I could not pin these materials down in time. And the raw materials of reality without that glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind...I am in my old room, yes, in the dark, certainly, and it is cold, obviously, but what time is it? "Nearly four, son." But I mean what time? | Sometimes a Great Notion | Ken Kesey | downeyr |
| 04:12:00h | Finally, she signalled with her light that she'd made it to the top. I signalled back, then shined the light downward to see how far the water had risen. I couldn't make out a thing. My watch read four-twelve in the morning. Not yet dawn. The morning papers still not delivered, trains not yet running, citizens of the surface world fast asleep, oblivious to all this. I pulled the rope taut with both hands, took a deep breath, then slowly began my climb. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 04:12:00h | Finally, she signaled with her light that she'd made it to the top. I signaled back, then shined the light downward to see how far the water had risen. I couldn't make out a thing. My watch read four-twelve in the morning. Not yet dawn. The morning papers still not delivered, trains not yet running, citizens of the surface world fast asleep, oblivious to all this. I pulled the rope taut with both hands, took a deep breath, then slowly began my climb. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | Cindeesan |
| 04:16:00h | I stooped to pick up my watch from the floor. Four-sixteen. Another hour until dawn. I went to the telephone and dialled my own number. It'd been a long time since I'd called home, so I had to struggle to remember the number. I let it ring fifteen times; no answer. I hung up, dialled again, and let it ring another fifteen times. Nobody. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 04:18:00h | Somebody had drilled a hole in my head and was stuffing it full of something like string. An awfully long string apparently, because the reel kept unwinding into my head. I was flailing my arms, yanking at it, but try as I might the string kept coming in. I sat up and ran my hands over my head. But there was no string. No holes either. A bell was ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. I grabbed the alarm clock, threw it on my lap, and slapped the red and black buttons with both hands. The ringing didn't stop. The telephone! The clock read four-eighteen. It was dark outside. Four-eighteen a.m. I got out of bed and picked up the receiver. "Hello?" I said.No sound came from the other end of the line. | Hard Boiled | Haruki Murakami | Cindeesan |
| 04:18:00h | Somebody had drilled a hole in my head and was stuffing it full of something like string. An awfully long string apparently, because the reel kept unwinding into my head. I was flailing my arms, yanking at it, but try as I might the string kept coming in. I sat up and ran my hands over my head. But there was no string. No holes either. A bell was ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. I grabbed the alarm clock, threw it on my lap, and slapped the red and black buttons with both hands. The ringing didn't stop. The telephone! The clock read four-eighteen. It was dark outside. Four-eighteen a.m.I got out of bed and picked up the receiver. "Hello?" I said.No sound came from the other end of the line. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | Cindeesan |
| 04:23:04h | Her chip pulsed the time. 04:23:04. It had been a long day. | Neuromancer | William Gibson | Proto Plasm |
| 04:25:00h | As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Jeanne |
| 04:30:00h | Tonight Clenette H. and the deeply whacked out Yolanda W. come back in from Footprints around 2315 in purple skirts and purple lipstick and ironed hair, tottering on heels and telling each other what a wicked time they just had. Hester Thrale undulates in in a false fox jacket at 2330 as usual even though she has to be up at like 0430 for the breakfast shift at the Provident Nursing Home and sometimes eats breakfast with Gately, both their faces nodding perilously close to their Frosted Flakes. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 04:30:00h | At the end of a relationship, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches. I was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal, betrayal because a union in which I had invested so much had been declared bankrupt without my feeling it to be so. Chloe had not given it a chance, I argued with myself, knowing the hopelessness of these inner courts announcing hollow verdicts at four thirty in the morning. | Essays on Love | Alain de Botton | @alanawhitman |
| 04:45:00h | He lies still in the darkness and listens. His wife's breathing at his side is so faint that he can scarcely hear it. One of these mornings she'll be lying dead beside me and I won't even notice, he thinks. Or maybe it'll be me. Daybreak will reveal that one of us has been left alone. He checks the clock on the table next to the bed. The hands glow and register 4:45 a.m. | Faceless Killers | Henning Mankell | Ellebeam |
| 04:46:00h | The phone rang again at four-forty-six."Hello," I said. "Hello," came a woman's voice. "Sorry about the time before. There's a disturbance in the sound field. Sometimes the sound goes away." "The sound goes away?" "Yes," she said. "The sound field's slipping. Can you hear me?" "Loud and clear," I said. It was the granddaughter of that kooky old scientist who'd given me the unicorn skull. The girl in the pink suit. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 04:48:00h | At 4:48 /the happy hour /when clarity visits/ warm darkness/ which soaks my eyes/ I know no sin/ this is the sickness of becoming great/ this vital need for which I would die/ to be loved | 4:48 psychosis | Sarah Kane | Theatre lover |
| 04:50:00h | Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle. Travelers and mariners would look up at the gloomy castle on the lonely hill and say, "Time lies frozen there. It's always Then. It's never Now." | The 13 Clocks | James Thurber | The Golux |
| 04:59:00h | The whole place smells like death no matter what the fuck you do. Gately gets to the shelter at 0459.9h and just shuts his head off as if his head had a control switch. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 05:00:00h | Just after five o'clock on this chill September morning, the fishmonger's cart, containing Kirsten and Emilia and such possessions as they have been able to assemble in the time allowed to them, is driven out of the gates of Rosenborg? | Music and Silence | Rose Tremain | marmite |
| 05:00:00h | Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins Silently closing her bedroom door Leaving the note that she hoped would say more She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief Quietly turning the backdoor key Stepping outside she is free. | She's Leaving Home | John Lennon & Paul McCartney | Rose_red |
| 05:00:00h | The day came slow, till five o'clock Then sprang before the hills Like hindered rubies, or the light A sudden musket spills | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 05:00:00h | There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse. | Things | Fleur Adcock | cathannabel |
| 05:00:00h | Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January, when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | JLM |
| 05:00:00h | The cold eye of the Duke was dazzled by the gleaming of a thousand jewels that sparkled on the table. His ears were filled with chiming as the clocks began to strike. "One!" said Hark. "Two!" cried Zorn of Zorna. "Three!" the Duke's voice almost whispered. 'Four!" sighed Saralinda. "Five!" the Golux crowed, and pointed at the table. "The task is done, the terms are met," he said. | The 13 Clocks | James Thurber | The Golux |
| 05:00:00h | The Times 05:00 hours is bad and anything with a three in it, for example 03:13. Those times between 02:00 and 04:00 are crippling for the next day's decisions as are those times on a Sunday and most times during the ravages of February. Unspeakable times include 04:59 and 01:07—but for some reason 05:58 is not a bad time, unlike its cousins 01:58 and 02:58 who are total buggers and always will be. Among the joke-times are anything before midnight, the lucid moments just after midnight and those just after making love, with sleep approaching. The why-even-bother-times are as follows: 06:14, 06:27, 06:32 and the infrequently-mentioned 06:02. The I-want to-die-now-times list 02:09, 04:11 and 03:33. The fact we all go on living regardless must point to something, the resilience of the human spirit, perhaps, equality of opportunity for fathers, or even Japanese alarm clock reliability. However, my familiarity with 04:19 of late has wrenched the bottom drawer from my desk and scattered the contents blowing across the park to be laughed at by children and dogs. I find this is inducing in me a quite serious indifference to most subjects, even my work. | Nowhere Better Than This | Anthony Wilson | exeterpoet8 |
| 05:00:00h | It was in the township of Dunwich, in a large and hardly inhabited farmhouse set against a hillside 4 miles from the village and a mile and a half from any other dwelling, that Wilbur Whately was born at 5 a.m. on Sunday, 2 February, 1913. The date was recalled because it was Candlemas, which people in Dunwich curiously observe under another name... | The Dunwich Horror | H.P. Lovecraft | Doc Tourneau |
| 05:00:00h | What causes young people to "come out," but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal season? | Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | alimison |
| 05:00:00h | Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January, when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | alimison |
| 05:04:00h | 5.04 a.m. on the substandard clock radio. Because why do people always say the day starts now? Really it starts in the middle of the night at a fraction of a second past midnight. | The Accidental | Ali Smith | little_f |
| 05:10:00h | "Oh, my husband, I have done the deed which will relieve you of the wife whom you hate! I have taken the poison--all of it that was left in the paper packet, which was the first that I found. If this is not enough to kill me, I have more left in the bottle. Ten minutes past five. "You have just gone, after giving me my composing draught. My courage failed me at the sight of you. I thought to myself, 'If he look at me kindly, I will confess what I have done, and let him save my life.' You never looked at me at all. You only looked at the medicine. I let you go without saying a word. | The Law and the Lady | Wilkie Collins | Cindeesan |
| 05:15:00h | By the first week of May, Ralph was waking up to birdsong at 5:15 a.m. He tried earplugs for a few nights, although he doubted from the outset that they would work. It wasn’t the newly returned birds that were waking him up, nor the occasional delivery-truck backfire out on Harris Avenue. He had always been the sort of guy who could sleep in the middle of a brass marching bad, and he didn’t think that had changed. What had changed was inside his head. | Insomnia | Stephen King | @nightwriter |
| 05:16:00h | She could go back to sleep. But typical and ironic, she is completely awake. It is completely light outside now; you can see for miles. Except there is nothing to see here; trees and fields and that kind of thing. 5:16 a.m on the substandard clock radio. She is really awake. | The Accidental | Ali Smith | cindeesan |
| 05:28:00h | I pulled into the Aoyama supermarket parking garage at five-twenty-eight. The sky to the east was getting light. I entered the store carrying my bag. Almost no one was in the place. A young clerk in a striped uniform sat reading a magazine; a woman of indeterminate age was buying a cartload of cans and instant food. I turned past the liquor display and went straight to the snack bar. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 05:30:00h | Gideon has been most unlike Gideon. As Walter Eastman is preoccupied himself, he has not had time, or more to the point, inclination, to notice aberrant behaviour. For instance, it is half-past five in the summer morning. Young Chase's narrow bachelor bed has evidently been slept in, for it is rumpled in that barely disturbed way which can never be counterfeited. His jug's empty and there's grey water in the basin, cleanly boy. The window is open, admitting the salubrious sea-breeze. He doesn't smoke anyway. What an innocent room it is. | An Insular Possession | Timothy Mo | Raylr |
| 05:30:00h | On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. | Chronicle of a Death Foretold | Gabriel García Márquez | LaGracia |
| 05:30:00h | It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of rising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage door was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as possible: all the yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a post-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him, and said the gentlemen were coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs dropped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | elbowroom |
| 05:35:00h | I squinted at the clock. 'It says twenty five before six,' I said and rolled away from him. | the dice man | Luke Rhinehart | Miles Teheux |
| 05:38:00h | ‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine. Some of us have been awake for hours, you know – I calculate precisely nine thousand, five hundred and fifteen, as someone didn’t bother to programme me so that I could sleep in the first place. I can’t think who that might have been.’ ‘Kovac,’ said Johnny sleepily. It was very rare for the quantum computer and not Sol to wake him up. ‘What’s going on? What time is it?’ ‘Good morning, Johnny,’ said the ship. ‘It is 5.38 a.m.’ ‘What?’ said Johnny. ‘It’s Saturday.’ ‘I told you he wouldn’t like it,’ said Sol, presumably to Kovac. ‘It’s hardly a matter of likes or dislikes,’ said the computer. ‘I have information I deem important enough to pass on at the earliest opportunity – whatever time it is.’ | Johnny Mackintosh: Battle for Earth | Keith Mansfield | Publishing Insider |
| 05:46:00h | Herbert could feel nothing. He wrote a legal-sounding phrase to the effect that the sentence had been carried out at 5.46 am., adding, 'without a snag'. The burial party had cursed him quietly as they'd hacked at the thick roots and tight soil. | A Whispered Name | William Brodrick | Raylr |
| 05.01:00h | "Oh yes. His clocks were set at one minute past five, four minutes past five and seven minutes past five. That was the combination number of a safe, 515457. The safe was concealed behind a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Inside the safe," continued Poirot, with distaste, "were the Crown Jewels of the Russian Royal Family." | The clocks | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 05.04:00h | "Oh yes. His clocks were set at one minute past five, four minutes past five and seven minutes past five. That was the combination number of a safe, 515457. The safe was concealed behind a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Inside the safe," continued Poirot, with distaste, "were the Crown Jewels of the Russian Royal Family." | The clocks | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 05.07:00h | "Oh yes. His clocks were set at one minute past five, four minutes past five and seven minutes past five. That was the combination number of a safe, 515457. The safe was concealed behind a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. Inside the safe," continued Poirot, with distaste, "were the Crown Jewels of the Russian Royal Family." | The clocks | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 06:00:00h | I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib. I was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at six a.m. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | JLM |
| 06:00:00h | . ‘What’s the time?’ I ask, and telling him so that he knows, ‘My mother likes “peace and quiet” to sleep late on Saturday mornings.’ ‘She does, does she? It’s six o’clock. I couldn’t sleep,’ he says wearily, like an afterthought, as if it’s what he expects. ‘Why are you up so early?’ ‘I woke up and needed my panda. I can’t find him.’ ‘Where do you think he can be?’ His face changes and he smiles again, bending down to look under the table and behind the curtain. But he isn’t clowning or teasing. He’s in earnest. | The Saints | Patsy Hickman | hickman58@aol.com |
| 06:00:00h | Lying awake in my attic room, i hear a clock strike six downstairs. It was fairly light and people were beginning to walk up and down the stairs...- i heard the clock strike eight downstairs before i rose and got dressed... I looked up - the clock tower of our saviour's showed ten. | Hunger | Knut Hamsun | miles93 |
| 06:00:00h | On the 15th of September 1840, about six o'clock in the morning, the Ville-de-Montereau, ready to depart, pouring out great whirls of smoke by the quai Saint-Bernard. | L'Education sentimentale | Gustave Flaubert | Gaber |
| 06:00:00h | The ball went on for a long time, until six in the morning; all were exhausted and wishing they had been in bed for at least three hours; but to leave early was like proclaiming the party a failure and offending the host and hostess who had taken such a lot of trouble, poor dears. | The Leopard | Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa | prestodetto |
| 06:00:00h | Rise from bed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.00 A.M. | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Letstalkaboutbooks |
| 06:13:00h | It's 06:13 .........Ma says I ought to be wrapped up in Rug already, Old Nick might possibly come. | Room | Emma Donoghue | |
| 06:15:00h | It was 6.15 am. Just starting to get light. A small knot of older teenagers were leaning against a nearby wall. They looked as though they had been out all night.Two of the guys stared at us. Their eyes hard and threatening. | Girl Missing | Sophie McKenzie | ella |
| 06:15:00h | Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling . . . . . . 6.15-6.30 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Letstalkaboutbooks |
| 06:15:00h | There are countless examples of times in this novel: 0615h (Abacus paperback edn, p 687); 0816 train (p 688-89); 2212.30-40h (p.716); 2300h (p 744); 2100 (p 755); 0500h (pp 217; 851); 0100 (p 868); 0145h (p 78); 1640h (p 95); 0300 (p 280) | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | Bronte |
| 06:25:00h | Still, it's your consciousness that's created it. Not somethin' just anyone could do. Others could be wanderin' around forever in who-knows-what contradictory chaos of a world. You're different. You seem t'be the immortal type." "When's the turnover into that world going to take place?" asked the chubby girl. The Professor looked at his watch. I looked at my watch. Six-twenty-five. Well past daybreak. Morning papers delivered. "According t'my estimates, in another twenty-nine hours and thirty-five minutes," said the Professor. "Plus or minus forty-five minutes. I set it at twelve noon for easy reference. Noon tomorrow. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 06:27:00h | At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. | White Teeth | Zadie Smith | michelleantoinette |
| 06:27:00h | Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1, 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate, facedown on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be too heavy upon him. | White Teeth | Zadie Smith | kwillz |
| 06:27:00h | At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduory and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Muskateer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. | White Teeth | Zadie Smith | @5_to_9_Jo |
| 06:27:52h | 06:27:52 by the chip in her optic nerve; Case had been following her progress through Villa Straylight for over an hour, letting the endorphin analogue she'd taken blot out his hangover. | Neuromancer | William Gibson | Proto Plasm |
| 06:30:00h | It was six-thirty. When the baby's cry came, they could not pick it out, and Sam, eagerly thrusting his face amongst their ears, said, "Listen, there, there, that's the new baby." He was red with delight and success. | The Man Who Loved Children | Christina Stead | Deanne |
| 06:30:00h | It was very cold sitting in the truck and after a while he got out and walked around and flailed at himself with his arms and stamped his boots. Then he got back in the truck. The bar clock said six-thirty...By eight-thirty he’d decided that it that was it would take to make the cab arrive then that’s what he would do and he started the engine. | Cities of the Plain (Picador pb, p 226) | Cormac McCarthy | Bronte |
| 06:30:00h | Daniel and the FBI men listened to the sounds of his mother waking up his father. Daniel still held the door-knob. He was ready to close the door the second he was told to. "What time is it?" said his father in a drugged voice. "Oh my God, it's six-thirty," his mother said. | The Book of Daniel | E.L. Doctorow | Nicholas Bryant |
| 06:30:00h | "Inside now MJ ordered. She pushed the three of us into the hotel room, thern shut the soor. I glanced at the clock by the bed. 6.30 am. Why were they waking Mum and Dad up this early? | Girl Missing | Sophie McKenzie | ella |
| 06:30:00h | Sometimes they were hooded carts, sometimes they were just open carts, with planks for seats, on which sat twelve cloaked and bonneted women, six a side, squeezed together, for the interminable journey. As late as 1914 I knew the carrier of Croydon-cum-Clopton, twelve miles from Cambridge; his cart started at 6.30 in the morning and got back at about ten at night. Though he was not old, he could neither read nor write; but he took commissions all along the road - a packet of needles for Mrs. This, and a new teapot for Mrs. That - and delivered them all correctly on the way back. | Period Piece | Gwen Raverat | Raylr |
| 06:30:00h | Nervously she jumped up and listened; the house itself was as still as ever; the footsteps had retreated. Through her wide-open window the brilliant rays of the morning sun were flooding her room with light. She looked up at the clock; it was half-past six—too early for any of the household to be already astir. | The Scarlet Pimpernel | Baroness Orczy | alimison |
| 06:33:00h | Woke 6.33 a.m. Last session with Anderson. He made it plain he's seen enough of me, and from now on I'm better alone. To sleep 8:00? (These count-downs terrify me.) He paused, then added: Goodbye, Eniwetok. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 06:35:00h | My watch lay on the dressing-table close by; glancing at it, I saw that the time was twenty-five minutes to seven. I had been told that the family breakfasted at nine, so I had nearly two-and-a-half hours of leisure. Of course, I would go out, and enjoy the freshness of the morning. I turned to the window again, just to take another view of the scenery in front of the house, and to decide in which direction I would go. And there, emerging from a wicket-gate that opened out of an adjacent plantation, I caught sight of Mr. Cazalette. | Ravensdene Court | J. S. Fletcher | Cindeesan |
| 06:45:00h | He was still hurriedly thinking all this through, unable to decide to get out of the bed, when the clock struck quarter to seven. There was a cautious knock at the door near his head. "Gregor", somebody called - it was his mother - "it's quarter to seven. Didn't you want to go somewhere?" That gentle voice! Gregor was shocked when he heard his own voice answering, it could hardly be recognised as the voice he had had before. As if from deep inside him, there was a painful and uncontrollable squeaking mixed in with it, the words could be made out at first but then there was a sort of echo which made them unclear, leaving the hearer unsure whether he had heard properly or not. Gregor had wanted to give a full answer and explain everything, but in the circumstances contented himself with saying: "Yes, mother, yes, thank-you, I'm getting up now." | Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka (Gutenberg edition) | nilpferd |
| 06:45:00h | As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and shook himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was accustomed to let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from one closed door to another on the ground floor; and, returning to his mat in great perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family, with a long and melancholy howl.' | No Name | Wilkie Collins | frankie01 |
| 06:46:00h | Then I hung about in the hall waiting for the milkman. That was the worst part of the business, for I was fairly choking to get out of doors. Six-thirty passed, then six-forty, but still he did not come. The fool had chosen this day of all days to be late. At one minute after the quarter to seven I heard the rattle of the cans outside. I opened the front door, and there was my man, singling out my cans from a bunch he carried and whistling through his teeth. He jumped a bit at the sight of me. | The Thirty-Nine Steps | John Buchan | LaGracia |
| 06.30:00h | Six-thirty was clearly a preposterous time and he, the client, obviously hadn't meant it seriously. A civilised six-thirty for twelve noon was almost certainly what he had in mind, and if he wanted to cut up rough about it, Dirk would have no option but to start handing out some serious statistics. Nobody got murdered before lunch. But nobody. People weren't up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both the blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up. Dirk had the figures to prove it. | The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 07:00:00h | I had left directions that I was to be called at seven. (...) It was a relief to get out of the room where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no second knocking at the door to startle me from my uneasy bed. The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock. The little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge, in her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door afforded a perspective view of the Aged in bed. "Halloa, Mr. Pip!" said Wemmick. (...) "Would you mind toasting this sausage for the Aged P.?" | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | losingtheplot |
| 07:00:00h | "Seven o'clock, already", he said to himself when the clock struck again, "seven o'clock, and there's still a fog like this." | Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka | MrsKPBrown |
| 07:00:00h | She locked herself in, made no reply to my bonjour through the door; she was up at seven o'clock, the samovar was taken in to her from the kitchen. | Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | kayebird |
| 07:00:00h | At seven o’clock in the morning, Rubashov was awakened by a bugle, but he did not get up. Soon he heard sounds in the corridor. He imagined that someone was to be tortured, and he dreaded hearing the first screams of pain. When the footsteps reached his own section, he saw through the eye hole that guards were serving breakfast. Rubashov did not receive any breakfast because he had reported himself ill. He began to pace up and down the cell, six and a half steps to the window, six and a half steps back. | Darkness at Noon | Arthur Koestler | alimison |
| 07:02:18h | 07:02:18 One and a half hours. 'Case,' she said, 'I wanna favour.' | Neuromancer | William Gibson | Proto Plasm |
| 07:05:00h | Ryan missed the dawn. He boarded a TWA 747 that left Dulles on time, at 7:05 A.M. The sky was overcast, and when the aircraft burst through the cloud layer into sunlight, Ryan did something he had never done before. For the first time in his life, Jack Ryan fell asleep on an airplane. | The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | Cindeesan |
| 07:05:00h | He shaved and dressed for the day. Then he sat down at the kitchen table with coffee and a cigarette. The children were still in bed. But in five minutes or so he planned to put boxes of cereal on the table and lay out bowls and spoons, then go in to wake them for breakfast. He really couldn't believe that the old woman who'd phoned him last night would show up this morning, as she'd said she would. He decided he'd wait until five minutes after seven o'clock, and then he'd call in, take the day off, and make every effort in the book to locate someone reliable. He brought the cup of coffee to his lips.It was then that he heard a rumbling sound out in the street. He left his cup and got up from the table to look out the window. A pickup truck had pulled over to the curb in front of his house. The pickup cab shook as the engine idled. Carlyle went to the front door, opened it, and waved. An old woman waved back and then let herself out of the vehicle. Carlyle saw the driver lean over and disappear under the dash. The truck gasped, shook itself once more, and fell still. | Where I'm Calling From | Raymond Carver | Cindeesan |
| 07:06:00h | " So far so good. There followed a little passage of time when we stood by the duty desk, drinking coffee and studiously not mentioning what we were all thinking and hoping: that Percy was late, that maybe Percy wasn't going to show up at all. Considering the hostile reviews he'd gotten on the way he'd handled the electrocution, that seemed at least possible. But Percy subscribed to that old axiom about how you should get right back on the horse that had thrown you, because here he came through the door at six minutes past seven, resplendent in his blue uniform with his sidearm on one hip and his hickory stick in its ridiculous custom-made holster on the other. | The Green Mile | Stephen King | frustrated artist |
| 07:09:00h | In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine! | There Will Come Soft Rains | Ray Bradbury | dkb624 |
| 07:10:00h | A search in Bradshaw informed me that a train left St Pancras at 7.10, which would land me at any Galloway station in the late afternoon. | The 39 Steps | John Buchan | dougiedownunder |
| 07:10:00h | "There were many others waiting to execute the same operation, so she would have to move fast, elbow her way to the front so that she emerged first. The time was 7:10 in the morning. The manoeuvre would start at 7:12. She looked apprehensively at the giant clock at the railway station." [ISBN 978-93-80905-06-8 | publication date 21 October 2011] | The Fourth Passenger | Mini Nair | RobinM |
| 07:12:00h | He taught me that if I had to meet someone for an appointment, I must refuse to follow the 'stupid human habit' of arbitrarily choosing a time based on fifteen-minute intervals. 'Never meet people at 7:45 or 6:30, Jasper, but pick times like 7:12 and 8:03!' | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 07:13:00h | It was all the more suprising and indeed alarming a little later, said Austerlitz, when I looked out of the corridor window of my carriage just before the train left at seven-thirteen, to find it dawning upon me with perfect certainty that I had seen the pattern of glass and steel roof above the platforms before, made up as it was of triangles, round arches, horizontal and vertical lines and diagonals, and in the same half light. | Austerlitz | W.G. Sebald | HannahFreeman |
| 07:15:00h | Gough again knocked on Mr and Mrs Kent's bedroom door. This time it was opened - Mary Kent had got out of bed and put on her dressing gown, having just checked her husband's watch: it was 7.15. A confused conversation ensued, in which each woman seemed to assume Saville was with the other. | The Suspicions of Mr Whicher | Kate Summerscale | Raylr |
| 07:15:00h | It was early in April in the year ’83 that I woke one morning to find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my bed. He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter-past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits. | The Adventure of the Speckled Band | Arthur Conan Doyle | PrivateMcAuslan |
| 07:15:00h | At 7:15 A.M., January 25th, we started flying northwestward under McTighe's pilotage with ten men, seven dogs, a sledge, a fuel and food supply, and other items including the plane's wireless outfit. The atmosphere was clear, fairly quiet, and relatively mild in temperature, and we anticipated very little trouble in reaching the latitude and longitude designated by Lake as the site of his camp. Our apprehensions were over what we might find, or fail to find, at the end of our journey, for silence continued to answer all calls dispatched to the camp. Every incident of that four-and-a-half-hour flight is burned into my recollection because of its crucial position in my life. It marked my loss, at the age of fifty-four, of all that peace and balance which the normal mind possesses through its accustomed conception of external nature and nature's laws. | At the Mountains of Madness | H.P. Lovecraft | frustrated artist |
| 07:17:00h | As of 7:17 A.M. local time on 30 June 1908, Padzhitnoff had been working for nearly a year as a contract employee of the Okhrana, receiving five hundred rubles a month, a sum which hovered at the exorbitant end of spy-budget outlays for those years. [Vintage pb edn, p 875] | Against the Day | T Pynchon | Bronte |
| 07:20:00h | And this was my timetable when I lived at home with Father and I thought that Mother was dead from a heart attack (this was the timetable for a Monday and also it is an approximation). 7.20 a.m. Wake up | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 07:20:00h | He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day. He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty. | Babbitt | SInclair Lewis | werblina |
| 07:25:00h | 7.25 a.m. Clean teeth and wash face | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 07:30:00h | Precisely at half past seven the station-master came into the traffic office. He weighed almost sixteen stone, but women always said that he was incredibly light on his feet when he danced. | Closely Observed Trains | Bohumil Hrabal | AggieH |
| 07:30:00h | "At half-past seven the next morning he rang the bell of 21 Ble heim Avenue...." | After Rain ("Gilbert's Mother") | William Trevor | lucekel |
| 07:35:00h | I looked at my watch. Seven thirty-five. | Bare Bones | Kathy Reichs | LLB |
| 07:40:00h | 7.40 a.m. Have breakfast | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 07:44:00h | And there I was, complaining that all this was just inconvenient, Anna castigates herself. The Goth was obviously right. What does it matter, really, if I'm a bit late for work? She voices her thoughts: "It's not exactly how you'd choose to go, is it? You'd rather die flying a kite with your grandchildren, or at a great party or something. Not on the seven forty-four." | One moment, one morning | Sarah Rayner | stjerome1st |
| 07:45:00h | Mr Green left for work at a quarter to eight, as he did every morning. He walked down his front steps carrying his empty-looking leatherette briefcase with the noisy silver clasps, opened his car door, and ducked his head to climb into the driver's seat. | A crime in the neighborhood | Suzanne Berne | Nicholas Bryant |
| 07:51:00h | Vimes fished out the Gooseberry as a red-hot cabbage smacked into the road behind him. "Good morning!" he said brightly to the surprised imp. "What is the time, please?" "Er...nine minutes to eight, Insert Name Here," said the imp. | Thud! | Terry Pratchett | PrivateMcAuslan |
| 07:55:00h | at 7.55 this morning the circus ran away to join me there is a lion in the wardrobe and in the pantry the clown goes down on the bareback rider | tightrope (a poem in Selected Poems 1967-1987) | Roger McGough | DennisPreston |
| 07:56:00h | I sit by the window, crunching toast, sipping coffee, and leafing through the paper in a leisurely way. At last, after devouring three slices, two cups of coffee, and all the Saturday sections, I stretch my arms in a big yawn and glance at the clock. I don't believe it. It's only seven fifty-six. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 08:00:00h | Few literary references to time of day are as powerful as Housman's short poem Eight O'Clock: He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to marketplace and people It tossed the down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck. Enough said! | Eight O'Clock | A.E. Housman | Hackwriter |
| 08:00:00h | "But for now it was still eight o'clock, and as I walked along the avenue under that brilliant blue sky, I was happy, my friends, as happy as any man who had ever lived." | Brooklyn Follies | Paul Auster | |
| 08:00:00h | Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o'clock in the parlour behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. | Great Expectations | Dickens | Bronte |
| 08:00:00h | Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world-- woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. | Anna Karenina | Tolstoy | Bronte |
| 08:00:00h | And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck. | Eight O'Clock | A.E. Housman | Hackwriter |
| 08:00:00h | The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and as my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school . | A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess | doctakeschair |
| 08:00:00h | At eight o'clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn't feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers and stomped off to the bathroom to wash. | Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy | Douglas Adams | AggieH |
| 08:00:00h | So here I'll watch the night and wait To see the morning shine, When he will hear the stroke of eight And not the stroke of nine; | A shropshire Lad | A E Housman | silentprinter |
| 08:00:00h | The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with superglue, I thought I would not go to school. [opening of ch 4] | A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess | Bronte |
| 08:00:00h | Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K. for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. | The Trial | Kafka | translated |
| 08:00:00h | At 8 o'clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn't feel very good. | Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | |
| 08:00:00h | Mrs. Rochester! She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time after eight o'clock a.m.; and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world alive, before I assigned to her all that property. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | |
| 08:00:00h | 8.00 a.m. Put school clothes on | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 08:00:00h | "And while she still held my gaze, still smiling, there came the slow and heavy tolling of the great house-bell, eight times; and then her smile fell." | Fingersmith | Sarah Waters | TineDS |
| 08:00:00h | At eight o’clock, a shaft of daylight came to wake us. The thousand facets of the lava on the rock face picked it up as it passed, scattering like a shower of sparks. | Journey to the Centre of the Earth | Jules Verne | terribleman |
| 08:00:00h | Through the curtained windows of the furnished apartment which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in the sitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of the carriage clock on the bookshelf to fourteen minutes to six. In other words, it was exactly eight; and Mrs. Hignett acknowledged the fact by moving her head on the pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up in bed. She always woke at eight precisely. | Three Men and a Maid | P.G. Wodehouse | frustrated artist |
| 08:00:00h | Dressed in sweater, anorak and long johns, he lay in bed, hemmed in on three sides by chunky wooden beams, and ate all the salted snacks in the minibar, and then all the sugary snacks, and when he was woken by reception at eight the following morning to be told that everyone was waiting for him downstairs, the wrapper of a Mars bar was still folded in his fist. | Solar | Ian McEwan | JohnDoe |
| 08:00:00h | 'Choose your own time' Don Ignacio said. 'Would 8 am on Sunday be convenient?' | Voices of the Old Sea | Norman Lewis | Proto Plasm |
| 08:00:00h | It was dated from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows: - "Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those offerings which were last night so disgusting to you. | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | HannahFreeman |
| 08:00:00h | When he opened the windows in the morning, the sky was as overcast as it had been, but the air seemed fresher, and regret set in. Had giving notice not been impetuous and wrongheaded, the result of an inconsequential indisposition? If he had held off a bit, if he had not been so quick to lose heart, if he had instead tried to adjust to the air or wait for the weather to improve, he would now have been free of stress and strain and looking forward to a morning on the beach like the one the day before. Too late. He must go on wanting what he had wanted yesterday. He dressed and rode down to the ground floor at eight for breakfast. | Death in Venice | Thomas Mann | @alanawhitman |
| 08:00:00h | "I'm not crying," Maria said when Carter called from the desert at 8 a.m. "I'm perfectly alright". "You don't sound perfectly alright | Play it as is Lays | Joan Didion | KDMiller |
| 08:00:00h | I hear noise at the ward door, off up the hall out of my sight. That ward door starts opening at eight and opens and closes a thousand times a day, kashash, click. | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey | downeyr |
| 08:00:00h | By eight o'clock Stillman would come out, always in his long brown overcoat, carrying a large, old-fashioned carpet bag. For two weeks this routine did not vary. The old man would wander through the streets of the neighbourhood, advancing slowly, sometimes by the merest of increments, pausing, moving on again, pausing once more, as though each step had to be weighed and measured before it could take its place among the sum total of steps. | City of Glass | Paul Auster | oheisbaer |
| 08:00:00h | By eight o'clock Stillman would come out, always in his long brown overcoat, carrying a large, old-fashioned carpet bag. For two weeks this routine did not vary. The old man would wander through the streets of the neighbourhood, advancing slowly, sometimes by the merest of increments, pausing, moving on again, pausing once more, as though each step had to be weighed and measured before it could take its place among the sum total of steps. | City of Glass | Paul Auster | oheisbaer |
| 08:03:00h | He taught me that if I had to meet someone for an appointment, I must refuse to follow the 'stupid human habit' of arbitrarily choosing a time based on fifteen-minute intervals. 'Never meet people at 7:45 or 6:30, Jasper, but pick times like 7:12 and 8:03!' | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 08:05:00h | 8.05 a.m. Pack school bag | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 08:08:00h | There was a young fellow named Tate Who dined with his girl at 8.08 But I'd hate to relate What that fellow named Tate And his tête-à-tête ate at 8.08. | ? | ? | Manny Rayner |
| 08:10:00h | 8.10 a.m. Read book or watch video | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 08:10:00h | Cell count down to 400,000. Woke 8:10. To sleep 7:15. (Appear to have lost my watch without realising it, had to drive into town to buy another.) | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 08:11:00h | 'Care for a turn on the engine?' he called to the doxies, and pointed up at the footplate. They laughed but voted not to, climbing up with their bathtub into one of the rattlers instead. They both had very fetching hats, with one flower apiece, but the prettiness of their faces made you think it was more. For some reason they both wore white rosettes pinned to their dresses. I looked again at the clock: eight-eleven. | The Blackpool Highflyer | Andrew Martin | DennisPreston |
| 08:15:00h | It was in the winter when this happened, very near the shortest day, and a week of fog into the bargain, so the fact that it was still very dark when George woke in the morning was no guide to him as to the time. He reached up, and hauled down his watch. It was a quarter-past eight. | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | JLM |
| 08:15:00h | You scrutinized your wrist: "It's eight fifteen. (And here time forked.) I'll turn it on." The screen In its blank broth evolved a lifelike blur, And music welled. | Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | SalParadise650 |
| 08:16:00h | I walk through the fruit trees toward a huge, square, brown patch of earth with vegetation growing in serried rows. These must be the vegetables. I prod one of them cautiously with my foot. It could be a cabbage or a lettuce. Or the leaves of something growing underground, maybe. To be honest, it could be an alien. I have no idea. I sit down on a mossy wooden bench and look at a nearby bush covered in white flowers. Mm. Pretty. Now what? What do people do in their gardens? I feel I should have something to read. Or someone to call. My fingers are itching to move. I look at my watch. Still only eight sixteen. Oh God. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 08:17:00h | Come on, I can't give up yet. I'll just sit here for a bit and enjoy the peace. I lean back and watch a little speckled bird pecking the ground nearby for a while. Then I look at my watch again: eight seventeen. I can't do this. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 08:20:00h | When the typewriters happen to pause (8:20 and other mythical hours), and there are no flights of American bombers in the sky, and the motor traffic's not too heavy in Oxford Street, you can hear winter birds cheeping outside, busy at the feeders the girls have put up. | Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | translated |
| 08:23:00h | "That orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than myself--when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know--except, perhaps, the leeches." "I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady with conviction. "Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket--it is quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose--" He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face. "I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between here and the station coming back." When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. | The flowering of the strange orchid | H.G. Wells | frustrated artist |
| 08:29:00h | At 8.29 I punched the front doorbell in Elgin Crescent. It was opened by a small oriental woman in a white apron. She showed me into a large, empty sitting room with an open fire and a couple of huge oil paintings. One was of an old bloke in Gainsborough style (a Stellings or Clarissa ancestor, perhaps) and the other a more or less random splosh-and-twirl in grey and tangerine that seemed designed to trigger a sequence of sophomore thoughts about 'art'. | Engleby | Sebastian Faulks | Raylr |
| 08:30:00h | 'The lecture was to be given tomorrow, and it was now almost eight-thirty.' | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | traverso1685 |
| 08:30:00h | I hadn't heard a car, and I didn't notice the tracks in the snow until I came off the trail and out on to the road, but then again I wasn't expecting a car, not at that time of day. It can't be later than eight. I check my watch, and it says eight-thirty. Oh. (My translation) | Out Stealing Horses | Per Petterson | AJ Jansson |
| 08:30:00h | At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | JK Rowling | kbergen |
| 08:30:00h | When he woke, at eight-thirty, he was alone in the bedroom. He put on his dressing gown and put in his hearing aid and went into the living room. | Deaf Sentence | David Lodge | Traverso 1685 |
| 08:30:00h | It is around 8:30. Sunshine comes through the windows at right. As the curtain rises, the family has just finished breakfast. | Long Day's Journey Into Night | Eugene O'Neill | SalParadise650 |
| 08:30:00h, 10:00.00h,19:30:00h | On July 25th, 8:30 a.m. the bitch Novaya dies whelping. At 10 o'clock she is lowered into her cool grave, at 7:30 that same evening we see our first floes and greet them wishing they were the last. | The Terrors of Ice and Darkness | Christoph Ransmayr | SimKle |
| 08:32:00h | 8.32 a.m. Catch bus to school | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 08:32:14h | 'Does anybody know the time a little more exactly is what I'm wondering, Don, since Day doesn't.' Gately checks his cheap digital, head still hung over the sofa's arm. 'I got 0832:14, 15, 16, Randy.' ''ks a lot, D.G. man.' | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 08:35:00h | It was thirty-five minutes past eight by the big clock of the central building when Mathieu crossed the yard towards the office which he occupied as chief designer. For eight years he had been employed at the works where, after a brilliant and special course of study, he had made his beginning as assistant draughtsman when but nineteen years old, receiving at that time a salary of one hundred francs a month. | Fruitfulness | Emile Zola | Cindeesan |
| 08:40:00h | At this moment the clock indicated 8.40. 'Five minutes more,' said Andrew Stuart. The five friends looked at each other. One may surmise that their heart-beats were slightly accelereted, for, even for bold gamblers, the stake was a large one.' | Around the world in eighty days | Jules Verne | AggieH |
| 08:40:00h | It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | FieraW |
| 08:43:00h | 8.43 a.m. Go past tropical fish shop | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 08:43:00h | "You understand this tape recorder is on?" "Uh huh" "And it's Wednesday, May 15, at eight forty-three in the mornin'." "If you say so" | A Time to Kill | John Grisham | DennisPreston |
| 08:47:00h | "Just on my way to the cottage. It's, er, ..8.47. Bit misty on the roads....." | Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency | Douglas Adams | DennisPreston |
| 08:50:00h | Punctually at ten minutes to nine, a quarter hour after early mass, the boy stood in his Sunday uniform outside his father's door. | The Radetzky March | Joseph Roth | AggieH |
| 08:50:00h | It was 8:50 in the morning and Bernie and I were alone on an Astoria side street, not far from a sandwich shop that sold a sopressatta sub called "The Bypass". I used to eat that sandwich weekly, wash it down with espresso soda, smoke a cigarette, go for a jog. Now I was too near the joke to order the sandwich, and my son's preschool in the throes of doctrinal schism. | The Ask | Sam Lipsyte | |
| 08:51:00h | 8.51 a.m. Arrive at school | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 08:52:00h | Message one. Tuesday, 8:52 A.M. Is anybody there? Hello? | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 08:55:00h | At five minutes to nine, Jacques, in his gray butler's livery, came down the stairs and said, "Young master, your Herr Papá is coming." | The Radetzky March | Joseph Roth | AggieH |
| 08:55:00h | George pulled out his watch and looked at it: it was five minutes to nine! | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | JLM |
| 08:57:00h | While the boy learnt the last lines of his Latin, and the doctor turned over the newspaper, the girl read a letter – evidently, from the large sprawling handwriting, the missive of some girlish correspondent. She was deep in it when, from one of the turrets of the Cathedral, a bell began to ring. At that, she glanced at her brother. "There's Martin, Dick!" she said. "You'll have to hurry." Many a long year before that, in one of the bygone centuries, a worthy citizen of Wrychester, Martin by name, had left a sum of money to the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral on condition that as long as ever the Cathedral stood, they should cause to be rung a bell from its smaller bell-tower for three minutes before nine o'clock every morning, all the year round. What Martin's object had been no one now knew--but this bell served to remind young gentlemen going to offices, and boys going to school, that the hour of their servitude was near. And Dick Bewery, without a word, bolted half his coffee, snatched up his book, grabbed at a cap which lay with more books on a chair close by, and vanished through the open window. | The Paradise Mystery | J.S. Fletcher | Cindeesan |
| 08.26:00h | It exploded much later than intended, probably a good twelve hours later, at twenty-six minutes past eight on Monday morning. Several defunct wristwatches, the property of victims, confirmed the time. As with its predecessors over the last few months, there had been no warning. But then none had been intended. The Düsseldorf car-bombing of a visiting Israeli arms-procurement official had been preceded by no warning, neither had the book bomb sent to the organisers of an Orthodox Jewish congress in Antwerp, which blew up the honorary secretary and burnt her assistant to death. Neither had the dustbin bomb outside an Israeli bank in Zürich, which maimed two passers-by. Only the Stockholm bomb had a warning, and that turned out to be a completely different group, not part of the series at all. | "The Little drummer Girl" | John Le Carre | frustrated artist |
| 08.50:00h | At ten to nine the clerks began to arrive.When they had hung up their coats and hates they came to the fireplace and stood warming themselves. If there was no fire, they stood there all the same | The Chestnut Tree (short Story) | V.S. Pritchett | jrsd |
| 09:00:00h | To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. | The Waste Land | T S Eliot | silentprinter |
| 09:00:00h | 'I could never get all the way down there before nine o'clock.' | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | traverso1685 |
| 09:00:00h | 'Look. Ignatius. I'm beat. I've been on the road since nine o'clock yesterday morning.' | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | traverso1685 |
| 09:00:00h | 'Look. Ignatius. I'm beat. I've been on the road since nine o'clock yesterday morning.' | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | traverso1685 |
| 09:00:00h | 9am A fly buzzed, the wall clock began to strike. After the nine golden strokes faded, the district captain began. "How is Herr Colonel Marek?" "Thank you, Papá, he's fine." "Still weak in geometry?" "Thank you, Papá, a little better." "Read any books?" "Yessir, Papá." | The Radetzky March | Joseph Roth | AggieH |
| 09:00:00h | 14 June 9:00 am woke up | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:00:00h | Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9.00am telling lies to one another, far from God. | Jesus' Son | Denis Johnson | philipmatthews |
| 09:00:00h | "At nine o'clock one morning late in July Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three noted horn." | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Sarah Churchwell |
| 09:00:00h | At nine o'clock, one morning late in July, Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three-noted horn | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
| 09:00:00h | 9.00 a.m. School assembly | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 09:00:00h | Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. | The Waste Land | T S Eliot | rimbaud60 |
| 09:00:00h | "On the third morning after their arrival, just as all the clocks in the city were striking nine individually, and somewhere about nine hundred and ninety-nine collectively, Sam was taking the air in George Yard, when a queer sort of fresh painted vehicle drove up, out of which there jumped with great agility, throwing the reins to a stout man who sat beside him, a queer sort of gentleman, who seemed made for the vehicle, and the vehicle for him." | The Pickwick Papers | Charles Dickens | robert_dixie |
| 09:00:00h | As nine o' clock was left behind, the preposterousness of the delay overwhelmed me, and I went in a kind of temper to the owner and said that I thought he should sign on another cook and weigh spars and be off. | A Single Pebble | John Hershey | Proto Plasm |
| 09:00:00h | He [Time] won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner! | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | Tammy Ho |
| 09:00:00h | It was around nine o'clock that I crossed the border into Cornwall. This was at least three hours before the rain began and the clouds were still all of a brilliant white. In fact, many of the sights that greeted me this morning were among the most charming I have so far encountered. It was unfortunate, then, that I could not for much of the time give to them the attention they warranted; for one may as well declare it, one was in a condition of some preoccupation with the thought that - barring some unseen complication - one would be meeting Miss Kenton again before the day's end. | The Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro | jo_eyre |
| 09:00:00h | Opening his window, Aschenbach thought he could smell the foul stench of the lagoon. A sudden despondency came over him. He considered leaving then and there. Once, years before, after weeks of a beautiful spring, he had been visited by this sort of weather and it so affected his health he had been obliged to flee. Was not the same listless fever setting in? The pressure in the temples, the heavy eyelids? Changing hotels again would be a nuisance, but if the wind failed to shift he could not possibly remain here. To be on the safe side, he did not unpack everything. At nine he went to breakfast in the specially designated buffet between the lobby and the dining room. | Death in Venice | Thomas Mann | @alanawhitman |
| 09:00:00h | The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse; In half an hour she promised to return. Perchance she cannot meet him: that's not so. | Romeo and Juliet | Shakespeare | Janelyn |
| 09:00:00h | It was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning. She said: “Do you know that it’s nearly nine o’clock, sir?” “Nine o’ what?” I cried, starting up. “Nine o’clock,” she replied, through the keyhole. “I thought you was a- oversleeping yourselves.” | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | Bookshop Becky |
| 09:00:00h | He was at breakfast at nine, and for the twentieth time consulted his "Bradshaw," to see at what earliest hour Dr. Grantly could arrive from Barchester. | The Warden | Anthony Trollope | elbowroom |
| 09:01:00h | 9:01 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:02:0h0 | 9:02 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:03:00h | 9:03 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:03:00h | This isn't a very good start to the new school year." I stared at her. What was she talking about? Why was she looking at her watch? I wasn't late. Okay, the school bell had rung as I was crossing the playground, but you always get five minutes to get to your classroom. "It's three minutes past nine," Miss Beckworth announced. "You're late." | The Lottie Project | Jacqueline Wilson | Letstalkaboutbooks |
| 09:04:00h | 9:04 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:04:00h | In the light of a narrow-beam lantern, Pierce checked his watch. It was 9.04. At 9.11, they swung the grating door open and entered the wine cellar proper. | The Great Train Robbery | Michael Crichton | DennisPreston |
| 09:05:00h | 9:05 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:05:00h | The tour of the office doesn't take that long. In fact, we're pretty much done by 9:05 a.m. Ed looks at everything twice and says it's all great, and gives me a list of contacts who might be helpful, then has to leave for his own office. And then, about an hour later, just as I'm elbow deep in rose stems and water and a hastily bought vase, Mum and Dad arrive, also bearing flowers, and a bottle of champagne, and a new box of paper clips, which is Dad's little joke. And even though I've only just showed the place to Ed, and even though it's just a room with a window and a pin board and two doors and two desks... I can't help feeling a buzz as I lead them around. It's mine. My space. My company. | Twenties Girl | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 09:05:00h | Kaldren pursues me like luminescent shadow. He has chalked up on the gateway '96,688,365,498,702'. Should confuse the mail man. Woke 9:05. To sleep 6:36. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 09:06:00h | 9:06 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:07:00h | 9:07 am lay in bed, staring at ceiling | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:08:00h | 9:08 am rolled over onto left side | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:09:00h | 9:09 am lay in bed, staring at wall | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:10:00h | 9:10 am lay in bed, staring at wall | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:11:00h | 9:11 am lay in bed, staring at wall | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:12:00h | 9:12 am lay in bed, staring at wall | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:13:00h | 9:13 am lay in bed, staring at wall | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:13:00h | She tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and thumbed hurriedly through her pink messages. Dr. Provetto, at 9:13 A.M. | Mistaken Identity | Lisas Scottoline | thecommonreader |
| 09:14:00h | 9:14 am lay in bed, staring at wall | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:15:00h | 9:15 am doubled over pillow, sat up to see out window | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:15:00h | 9.15 a.m. First morning class | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 09:15:00h | "Great!" Jones commented. "I've never seen it do that before. That's all right. Okay." Jones pulled a handful of pencils from his back pocket. "Now, I got the contact first at 0915 or so, and the bearing was about two-six-nine." He set a pencil down, eraser at Dallas' position, point directed west towards the target. "Then at 0930 it was bearing a two-six-zero. At 0948, it was two-five-zero. There's some error built into these, Cap'n. It was a tough signal to lock in on, but the errors should average out. Right about then we got all this other activity, and I had to go after them, but I came back to it about 1000, and the bearing was two-four-two." Jones set down another pencil on the due-east line traced when the Dallas had moved away from the Icelandic coast. "At 1015 it was two-three-four, and at 1030 it was two-two-seven. These last two are shaky, sir. The signal was real faint, and I didn't have a very good lock on it." Jones looked up. He appeared nervous. | The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | Cindeesan |
| 09:16:00h | 9:16 am sat in bed, staring out window | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:17:00h | 9:17 am sat in bed, staring out window | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:18:00h | 9:18 am sat in bed, staring out window | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:19:00h | 9:19 am sat in bed, staring out window | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 09:20:00h | The following morning at 9.20 Mr Cribbage straightened his greasy old tie, combed his Hitler moustache and arranged the few strands of his hair across his bald patch. From 'Red Dog and the Dreaded Cribbages' chapter, p 99, hardback edn | Red Dog | Louis de Bernieres | Bronte |
| 09:20:00h | 'll compromise by saying that I left home at eight and spent an hour travelling to a nine o'clock appointment. Twenty minutes later is nine-twenty. | Girl, Interrupted | Susanna Kaysen | |
| 09:20:00h | At twenty minutes past nine, the Duke of Dunstable, who had dined off a tray in his room, was still there, waiting for his coffee and liqueur. | Uncle Fred in the Springtime | P.G. Wodehouse | mountainscribe |
| 09:25:00h | A man I would cross the street to avoid at nine o'clock - by nine twenty-five I wanted to fuck him until he wept. My legs trembled with it. My voice floated out of my mouth when I opened it to speak. The glass wall of the meeting room was huge and suddenly too transparent. | The Forgotten Waltz | Anne Enright | |
| 09:28:00h | He entered No. 10 for the first time, he who had sat on the Government benches for eight years and who had known the Prime Minister from youth up. "This clock right?" he asked the butler in the hall. "Yes, sir." The clock showed twenty-eight minutes past nine. "The clocks here have to be right, sir," the butler added with pride and a respectful humour, on the stairs. | Lord Raingo | Arnold Bennett | |
| 09:30:00h | The body came in at nine-thirty this morning. One of Holding's men went to the house and collected it. There was nothing particularly unusual about the death. The man had had a fear of hospitals and had died at home, being cared for more than adequately by his devoted wife. | Trumpet | Jackie Kay | msslryder |
| 09:30:00h | Up the welcomingly warm morning hill we trudge, side by each, bound finally for the Hall of Fame. It's 9.30, and time is in fact a-wastin'. | Independence Day | Richard Ford | Bronte |
| 09:30:00h | he looked at his watch; it was half-past nine | A watcher by the dead | Ambrose Bierce | |
| 09:30:00h | It was nine-thirty. In another ten minutes she would turn off the heat; then it would take a while for the water to cool. In the meantime there was nothing to do but wait. “Have you thought it through April?” Never undertake to do a thing until you’ve –“ But she needed no more advice and no more instruction. She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents not Aunt Claire not Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone. | Revolutionary Road | Richard Yates | ginnymyhedgehog |
| 09:32:00h | Sandy barely made the nine-thirty-two and found a seat in no-smoking. She'd been looking forward to this visit with Lisbeth. They hadn't seen each other in months, not since January, when Sandy had returned from Jamaica. And on that day Sandy was sporting a full-blown herpes virus on her lower lip. | Wifey | Judy Blume | martinet |
| 09:36:00h | I grab a pen and the pad of paper by the phone and start scribbling a list for the day. I have an image of myself moving smoothly from task to task, brush in one hand, duster in the other, bringing order to everything. Like Mary Poppins. 9:30-9:36 Make Geigers' bed 9:36-9:42 Take laundry out of machine and put in dryer 9:42-10:00 Clean bathrooms I get to the end and read it over with a fresh surge of optimism. At this rate I should be done easily by lunchtime. 9:36 Fuck. I cannot make this bed. Why won't this sheet lie flat? 9:42 And why do they make mattresses so heavy? | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 09:40:00h | Must have the phone disconnected. Some contractor keeps calling me up about payment for 50 bags of cement he claims I collected ten days ago. Says he helped me load them onto a truck himself. I did drive Whitby's pick-up into town but only to get some lead screening. What does he think I'd do with all that cement? Just the sort of irritating thing you don't expect to hang over your final exit. (Moral: don't try too hard to forget Eniwetok.) Woke 9:40. To sleep 4:15. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 09:45:00h | 9.15, 9.30, 9.45, 10! Bond felt the excitement ball up inside him like cat's fur. | On Her Majesty's Secret Service | Ian Fleming | DennisPreston |
| 09:50:00h | Ten minutes to ten. "I had just time to hide the bottle (after the nurse had left me) when you came into my room."I had another moment of weakness when I saw you. I determined to give myself a last chance of life. That is to say, I determined to offer you a last opportunity of treating me kindly. I asked you to get me a cup of tea. If, in paying me this little attention, you only encouraged me by one fond word or one fond look, I resolved not to take the second dose of poison. "You obeyed my wishes, but you were not kind. You gave me my tea, Eustace, as if you were giving a drink to your dog. And then you wondered in a languid way (thinking, I suppose, of Mrs. Beauly all the time), at my dropping the cup in handing it back to you. I really could not help it; my hand would tremble. In my place, your hand might have trembled too--with the arsenic under the bedclothes. You politely hoped, before you went away? that the tea would do me good--and, oh God, you could not even look at me when you said that! You looked at the broken bits of the tea-cup."The instant you were out of the room I took the poison--a double dose this time. | The Law and the Lady | Wilkie Collins | Cindeesan |
| 09:53:00h | Miss Pettigrew went to the bus-stop to await a bus. She could not afford the fare, but she could still less afford to lose a possible situation by being late. The bus deposited her about five minutes' walk from Onslow Mansions, an at seven minutes to ten precisely she was outside her destination. | Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day | Winifred Watson | A Reader |
| 09:54:00h | 9:54 This is sheer torture. My arms have never ached so much in my entire life. The blankets weigh a ton, and the sheets won't go straight and I have no idea how to do the wretched corners. How do chambermaids do it? | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 09:55:00h | At five to ten I'm ready in the hall. Nathaniel's mother's house is nearby but apparently tricky to find, so the plan is to meet here and he'll walk me over. I check my reflection in the hall mirror and wince. The streak of bleach in my hair is as obvious as ever. Am I really going out in public like this? I push my hair backward and forward a few times – but I can't hide it. Maybe I could walk along with my hand carelessly positioned at my head, as if I'm thinking hard. I attempt a few casual, pensive poses in the mirror. “Is your head all right?” I swivel round in shock to see Nathaniel at the open door, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. “Er . . . fine,” I say, my hand still glued to my head. “I was just . . . “ Oh there's no point. I bring my hand down from my hair and Nathaniel regards the streak for a moment. “It looks nice,” he says. “Like a badger.” | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 09.35:00h | Nine-thirty-five. He really must be gone. The bird is no longer feeding but sitting at the apex of a curl of razor wire. | The Memory of Love | Aminatta Forna | |
| 1:00:00h | Hickory Dickory Dock The mouse ran up the clock The clock struck one (donggggg) The mouse ran down Hickory Dickory Dock | Traditional nursery rhyme | anon ? | k1 |
| 10:00:00h | 'At about ten o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows, and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.' | Of Mice And Men | John Steinbeck | RobertLock |
| 10:00:00h | "The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted he would lose. The written verdict was handed down at 10:00 on Friday moning, and all that remained was a summing-up from the reporters waiting in the corridor outside the district court." | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | Stieg Larsson | RachelG |
| 10:00:00h | The pundit sighed. 'Only a fool like me would leave his door open when a riot can occur at any moment, and only a fool like me would say yes to you,' he said. 'What time?' Just his head was sticking out of the partially opened door. The money from blessing the ice-cream factory must have dulled his desire for work, I thought. 'Ten.' 'Ten-thirty.' Without another word, he closed the door. | An Obedient Father | Akhil Sharma | AggieH |
| 10:00:00h | On the tenth day of September Eighteen hundred Twenty Three Wednesday morn, and I remember Ten on the clock the Hour to be" | Notebook Coleridge goes to the Quantock Hill | Samuel Taylor Coleridge | |
| 10:00:00h | The written verdict was handed down at 10:00 on Friday morning, and allthat remained was a summing up from the reporters waiting in the corridor outside the district court. | The girl with the dragon tattoo | Stieg Larsson | |
| 10:00:00h | didn’t sleep because it was only around ten o’clock when I woke up. | Catcher in the Rye | J.D Salinger | |
| 10:00:00h | Monday 30 March 1668 Up betimes, and so to the office, there to do business till about 10 o’clock | The Diary of Samuel Pepys | Samuel Pepys | KnitOne |
| 10:00:00h | " . . .the clock ticked louder and louder until there was a terrific explosion right in her ear. Orlando leapt as if she had been violently struck on the head. Ten times she was struck" | Orlando | Virginia Woolf | eekageek |
| 10:00:00h | According to military records no US bombers or any other kind of aircraft were flying over that region at the time, that is around 10 am on November 7,1944. | Kafka on the shore | Haruki Murakami | soniakan |
| 10:00:00h | King Richard: Well, but what's o'clock? Buckingham: Upon the stroke of ten. | Richard III | William Shakespeare | Irv |
| 10:00:00h | The Saturday immediately preceding the examinations was a very busy day for Kennedy. At ten o' clock he was entering Willey's room; the latter had given him a key and left the room vacant by previous arrangement - in fact he had taken Olivia on another house hunting trip. | The Greeks have a word for it | Barry Unsworth | Proto Plasm |
| 10:00:00h | I went to bed and the next thing I knew I was awake again and it was getting on for ten o' clock in the morning. Ring, ring, said the telephone, ring, ring. | The Medusa Frequency | Russell Hoban | Proto Plasm |
| 10:00:00h | ––In assaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle Toby found the same objection in his wig, ––so that went off too: ––So that with one thing and what with another, as always falls out when a man is in the most haste, ––'twas ten o'clock, which was half an hour later than his usual time before my uncle Toby sallied out. | Tristram Shandy | Laurence Sterne | Eugenius |
| 10:00:00h | If Wednesday should ever come! It did come, and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for. It came - it was fine - and Catherine trod on air. By ten o'clock, the chaise and four conveyed the two from the abbey; and, after an agreeable drive of almost twenty miles, they entered Woodston, a large and populous village, in a situation not unpleasant. | Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen | alimison |
| 10:00:00h | The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahoney I planned a day's mitching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge. | Dubliners | James Joyce | Dee |
| 10:03:00h | It's 10.03 according to his watch, and he is travelling down through the Scottish highlands to Inverness, tired and ever-so-slightly anxious in case he falls asleep between now and when the train reaches the station, and misses his cue to say to Alice, Drew and Aleesha: 'OK, this is Inverness, let's move it.' | “Vanilla-Bright like Eminem” from The Farenheit Twins | Michel Faber | DennisPreston |
| 10:05:00h | We both watch as a pair of swans sail regally under the little bridge. Then I glance at my watch. It's already five past ten. “We should get going,” I say with a little start. Your mother will be waiting.” “There's no rush,” Nathaniel calls as I hasten down the other side of the bridge. “We've got all day.” He lopes down the bridge. “It's OK. You can slow down.” I try to match his relaxed pace. But I'm not used to this easy rhythm. I'm used to striding along crowded pavements, fighting my way, pushing and elbowing. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 10:10:00h | 10:10 Shot is fired. | The Hollow Man | John Dickson Carr | Machiel |
| 10:12:00h | “Now, have you got that?” Trish steps back from the fireplace. “Let's see. Which way do the china dogs go?” She lifts an arm to block my view of the mantelpiece. I don't believe it. She's testing me. “The china dogs,” she prompts. “Which way?” Oh, God, I cannot resist this. “Er...” I ponder hard for a few moments. “They face . . . out?” “Each other!” Trish cries in exasperation. “They face each other!” “Oh right,” I say apologetically. “Yes. Sorry. I've got that now.” Trish has closed her eyes and is holding two fingers to her forehead as though the stress of stupid help is too much to bear. “Never mind she says at last. “We'll try again tomorrow.” “I'll take the coffee tray out,” I suggest humbly. As I pick it up I glance again at my watch. Ten twelve. I wonder if they've started the meeting. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 10:14:00h | “Okay. Ten fourteen: Mrs. Narada reports that her cat has been attacked by a large dog. Now I send all the boys out looking, but they don't find anything until eleven. Then one of them calls in that a big dog has just bitten holes in the tires on his golf cart and run off. Eleven thirty: Dr. Epstein makes his first lost-nap call: dog howling. Eleven thirty-five: Mrs. Norcross is putting the kids out on the deck for some burgers when a big dog jumps over the rail, eats the burgers, growls at the kids, runs off. First mention of lawsuit.” | Coyote Blue | Christopher Moore | Cindeesan |
| 10:15:00h | At 10.15 Arlena departed from her rondezvous, a minute or two later Patrick Redfern came down and registered surprise, annoyance, etc. Christine's task was easy enough. Keeping her own watch concealed she asked she asked Linda at twenty-five past eleven what time it was. Linda looked at her watch and replied that it was a quarter to twelve. | Evil under the sun | Agatha Christie | |
| 10:16:00h | 10:16 At last. Forty minutes of hard work and I have made precisely one bed. I'm way behind. But never mind. Just keep moving. Laundry next. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 10:17:00h | "By the bye," said the first, "I was able this morning to telegraph the very words of the order to my cousin at seventeen minutes past ten." "And I sent it to the Daily Telegraph at thirteen minutes past ten." "Bravo, Mr. Blount!" "Very good, M. Jolivet." "I will try and match that!" "It will be difficult." "I can try, however." So saying, the French correspondent familiarly saluted the Englishman, who bowed stiffly. The governor's proclamation did not concern these two news-hunters, as they were neither Russians nor foreigners of Asiatic origin. However, being urged by the same instinct, they had left Nijni-Novgorod together. It was natural that they should take the same means of transport, and that they should follow the same route to the Siberian steppes. Traveling companions, whether enemies or friends, they had a week to pass together before "the hunt would be open." And then success to the most expert! Alcide Jolivet had made the first advances, and Harry Blount had accepted them though he had done so coldly. | Michel Strogoff, the courier of the Tsar | Jules Verne | frustrated artist |
| 10:18:00h | I know that it was 10:18 when I got home because I look at my watch a lot. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 10:20:00h | He drained his third cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole and the pool under it brought back to his memory the dark turf-coloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The box of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy. 1 Pair Buskins. 1 D. Coat. 3 Articles and White. 1 Man's Pants. Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box, speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely: -- How much is the clock fast now? His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side. -- An hour and twenty-five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear knows you might try to be in time for your lectures. | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce | Cindeesan |
| 10:22:27h | ...before I had time to figure out what to do, or even what to think or feel, the phone started ringing. It was 10:22:27. I looked at the caller ID and saw that it was him. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 10:25:00h | One meal is enough now, topped up with a glucose shot. Sleep is still 'black', completely unrefreshing. Last night I took a 16 mm. film of the first three hours, screened it this morning at the lab. The first true-horror movie. I looked like a half-animated corpse. Woke 10:25. To sleep 3:45. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 10:26:00h | 10:26 No. Please, no. I can hardly bear to look. It's a total disaster. Everything in the washing machine has gone pink. Every single thing. What happened? With trembling fingers I pick out a damp cashmere cardigan. It was a cream when I put it in. It's now a sickly shade of candy floss. I knew K3 was bad news. I knew it - | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 10:27:00h | She is on holiday in Norfolk. The substandard clock radio says 10:27 a.m. The noise is Katrina the Cleaner thumping the hoover against the skirting boards and the bedroom doors. Her hand is asleep. It is still hooked through the handstrap of the camera. She unhooks it and shakes it to get the blood back into it. She puts her feet on top of her trainers and slides them across the substandard carpet. It has the bare naked feet of who knows how many hundreds of dead or old people on it. | The Accidental | Ali Smith | cindeesan |
| 10:30:00h | At ten-thirty I'm cleaned up, shaved and dressed in my Easter best - a two-piece seersucker Palm Beach I've had since college. | The Sportswriter, ch 9 | Richard Ford | Bronte |
| 10:30:00h | 10.30 a.m. Break | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 10:38:00h | There must be a solution, there must be. Frantically I scan the cans of products stacked on the shelves. Stain Away. Vanish. There has to be a remedy. . . . I just need to think. . . . 10:38 OK, I have the answer. It may not totally work—but it's my best shot. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 10:45:00h | They reached King's Cross at a quarter to eleven. Mr Weasley dashed across the road to get trolleys for their trunks and they all hurried into the station. | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | J.K.Rowling | mistysolitude |
| 10:50:00h | 10.50 a.m. Art class with Mrs Peters | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 10:50:00h | As he walked back to the flight office, airmen were forming a line to await the arrival of the NAAFI van with morning tea and cakes. Lambert looked at his watch; it was ten to eleven. | Bomber | Len Deighton | Mr Thing |
| 10:53:00h | He begins to make a record of our observations.'10.53 hrs,' he writes, as we crouch at the top of the stairs, listening to his mother in the hall below. | Spies | Michael Frayn | DennisPreston |
| 10:53:00h | I gaze and gaze again at that face, which seems to me both strange and familiar, said Austerlitz, I run the tape back repeatedly, looking at the time indicator in the top left-hand corner of the screen, where the figures covering part of her forehead show the minutes and seconds, from 10:53 to 10:57, while the hundredths of a second flash by so fast that you cannot read and capture them. | Austerlitz | W.G. Sebald | |
| 10:55:00h | The clock was still saying five minutes to eleven when pooh and Piglet set out their way half an hour later. | The House at Pooh Corner | AA Milne | |
| 10:57:00h | I gaze and gaze again at that face, which seems to me both strange and familiar, said Austerlitz, I run the tape back repeatedly, looking at the time indicator in the top left-hand corner of the screen, where the figures covering part of her forehead show the minutes and seconds, from 10:53 to 10:57, while the hundredths of a second flash by so fast that you cannot read and capture them. | Austerlitz | W.G. Sebald | |
| 10:59:00h | Harry grunted in his sleep and his face slid down the window an inch or so, making his glasses still more lopsided, but he did not wake up. An alarm clock, repaired by Harry several years ago, ticked loudly on the sill, showing one minute to eleven. | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | JK Rowling | Habibti |
| 10.30:00h | according to the clock on the wall, it is barely ten thirty. | The Hours | michael cunningham | candide |
| 11:00:00h | It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four millon dollars. | The big sleep | Raymond Chandler | nilpferd |
| 11:00:00h | Quiet as I am, I become at Eleven o'Clock in the Morning on every day of the week save Sunday a raving, ranting maniac -- a dangerous lunatic, panting with insane desires to do, not only myself but other people, a mischief, and possessed less by hallucination than by rabies. | Twice Around the Clock | George Augustus Sala [quoted in Kevin Jackson's Book of Hours] | |
| 11:00:00h | "By 11 o'clock I have finished the first chapter of Mr Y. The winter sun is peeping meekly through the thin curtains and I decide to get up" | The End of Mr Y | Scarlett Thomas | RufusDeRella |
| 11:00:00h | At eleven o'clock in the morning, large flakes had appeared from a colourless sky and invaded the fields, gardens and lawns of Romerike like an armada from outer space. | The Snowman | Jo Nesbo | |
| 11:00:00h | We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is going to, or anything about it. | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | JLM |
| 11:00:00h | By morning, my meticulousness has faded. The sleeping pill I took has had no effect, I feel sandpapered and shaky, and, in order to hang on, I slide into domestic obsessing. I lock up the house, and am compelled to unlock it to double check that I have turned off the iron and run the washing machine. I then have to wait for the delay on the burglar alarm and this leaves me time to think - not a good idea right now. I might remember, for instance, that I am about to spend two hours with people I have never met doing something I have never done. What kind of vanity is this? What will people say? My sister is terrified that I might write and tell all the family secrets. Why do I feel like a rebel, like an iconoclast? I am only trying to do a writing class, what is wrong with that? I keep telling myself that once in the car I will be fine, I can listen to Radio Four Woman’s Hour and that will take me till eleven o’clock when the class starts. I have given myself an hour and a half to drive from Notting Hill Gate to Tavistock Square. | The Saints | patsy hickman | hickman58@aol.com |
| 11:00:00h | We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started from.Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is going to, or anything about it. | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K Jerome | Proto Plasm |
| 11:00:00h | As they looked the whole world became perfectly silent, and a flight of gulls crossed the sky, first one gull leading, then another, and in this extraordinary silence and peace, in this pallor, in this purity, bells struck eleven times the sound fading up there among the gulls. | Mrs. Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | Patricia |
| 11:00:00h | At eleven o'clock the phone rang, and still the figure did not respond, any more than it had responded when the phone had rung at twenty-five to seven, and again for ten minutes continuously starting at five to seven, after which it had settled into a long and significant silence, disturbed only by the braying of police sirens in a nearby street at around nine o'clock, the delivery of a large eighteenth-century dual manual harpsichord at around nine-fifteen, and the collection of same by bailiffs at a little after ten. | The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 11:00:00h | "He was rather a long time, and I began to feel muffled, weighed down by thick stuffs and silence. I thought: He'll never come back; and when he did his figure seemed to come at me from very far away, dream-like and dwindled, making his way back along a tunnel...I dare say it was champagne at eleven in the morning. | The Weather in the Streets | Rosamond Lehmann | Lehmannfan |
| 11:00:00h | As her husband had told him, she was still in bed although it was past 11 o'clock. Her normally mobile face was encased in clay, rigid and menacing as an Aztec mask. | Scoop | Evelyn Waugh | malice_dog |
| 11:00:00h | Big Ben was striking as she stepped out into the street. It was eleven o'clock and the unused hour was fresh as if issued to children on a beach. | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | ribbonlaceandbutton |
| 11:00:00h | We passed a few sad hours until eleven o'clock, when the trial was to commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture. | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | alimison |
| 11:00:00h | Perhaps best not to come this weekend – we have a houseful with much family &c (my mother) – on top of which Sebby Stokes is coming down to look at Cecil's poems. It will be somewhat of a "Cecil weekend", and you would barely get a word in! Though perhaps' – but here the bracket clock whirred and then hectically struck eleven, its weights spooling downwards at the sudden expense of energy. She had to sit for a moment, when the echo had vanished, to repossess her thoughts. Other clocks (and she could hear the grandfather in the hall chime belatedly) showed a more respectful attitude to telling the hour. They struck, all through the house, like attentive servants. Not so that old brass bully the morning-room clock, which banged it out as fast as it could. 'Life is short!' it shouted. 'Get on with it, before I strike again!' Well, it was their motto, wasn't it: Carpe Diem! | The Stranger's Child | Alan Hollinghurst | Richard Roberts |
| 11:00:00h | 'Who can - what can -” asked Mrs Dalloway (thinking it was outrageous to be interrupted at eleven o'clock on the morning of the day she was giving a party), hearing a step on the stairs. | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | Jessica K Malone |
| 11:03:00h | "What makes you think it's for real?" "Just a hunch, really. He sounded for real. Sometimes you can just tell about people"-he smiled-"even if you're a dull old WASP." "I think it's a setup." "Why?" "I just do. Why would someone from the government want to help you?" "Good question. Guess I'll find out." She went back into the kitchen."What time are you meeting him?" she called out. "Eleven oh-three," he said. "That made me think he's for real. Military and intelligence types set precise appointment times to eliminate confusion and ambiguity. Nothing ambiguous about eleven oh-three." | Little Green Men | Christopher Buckley | Cindeesan |
| 11:05:00h | July 3: 5 3/4 hours. Little done today. Deepening lethargy, dragged myself over to the lab, nearly left the road twice. Concentrated enough to feed the zoo and get the log up to date. Read through the operating manuals Whitby left for the last time, decided on a delivery rate of 40 rontgens/min., target distance of 530 cm. Everything is ready now. Woke 11:05. To sleep 3:15. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 11:06:00h | 11:06 And . . . oh. The ironing. What am I going to do about that? | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 11:07:00h | At exactly seven minutes past eleven by the ship's clock the Adventurer gave a prolonged screech and, moorings cast off, edged her way out of the basin and dipped her nose in the laughing waters of the bay, embarked at last on a voyage that was destined to fully vindicate her new name. | The Adventure Club Afloat | Ralph Henry Barbour | Cindeesan |
| 11:12:00h | 11:12 I have a solution, via the local paper. A girl from the village will collect it, iron it all overnight at £3 a shirt, and sew on Eddie's button. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 11:15:00h | The first time I saw them it was around eleven, eleven-fifteen, a Saturday morning, I was about two thirds through my route when I turned onto their block and noticed a '56 Ford sedan pulled up in the yard with a big open U-Haul behind. There are only three houses on Pine, and theirs was the last house,the others being the Murchisons, who'd been in Arcata a little less than a year, and the Grants, who'd been here about two years. Murchison worked at Simpson Redwood, and Gene Grant was a cook on the morning shift at Denny's. Those two, then a vacant lot, then the house on the end that used to belong to the Coles. | Where I'm Calling From | Raymond Carver | Cindeesan |
| 11:17:00h | Mrs. Mooney glanced instinctively at the little gilt clock on the mantelpiece as soon as she had become aware through her revery that the bells of George's Church had stopped ringing. It was seventeen minutes past eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr. Doran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street. She was sure she would win. | Dubliners | James Joyce | terribleman |
| 11:20:00h | OFFICER'S NOTES Disruption alert logged 11h20 from Stones' Pool Hall (Premises ID 33CBD-Long181). Officer and Aito /379 responded. On arrival found subject shouting threats and acting in aggressive manner. A scan of the subject's SIM ID register revealed that the subject has recent priors including previous public disruptions and a juvenile record. | Moxyland | Lauren Beukes | Kim A H |
| 11:25:00h | At 10.15 Arlena departed from her rondezvous, a minute or two later Patrick Redfern came down and registered surprise, annoyance, etc. Christine's task was easy enough. Keeping her own watch concealed she asked Linda at twenty-five past eleven what time it was. Linda looked at her watch and replied that it was a quarter to twelve. | Evil under the Sun | Agatha Christie | translated |
| 11:30:00h | "O, Frank - I made a mistake! - I thought that church with the spire was All Saints', and I was at the door at half-past eleven to a minute as you said..." | Far from the madding crowd | Thomas Hardy | Rose_red |
| 11:30:00h | " Thank-you," said C.B. quietly; but as he hung up his face was grim. In a few minutes he would have to break it to John that, although they had braved such dredful perils dring the earlier part of the night they had, after all, failed to save Christina. Beddows had abjured Satan at a little after half-past eleven. By about eighteen minutes the Canon had beaten them to it again." | To the Devil a Daughter | Dennis Wheatley | frustrated artist |
| 11:30:00h | 'It is now 11.30. The door to this room is shut, and will remain shut, barring emergencies, until 12.00. I am authorised to inform you that we are now under battle orders. | Singularity Sky | Charles Stross | Proto Plasm |
| 11:30:00h | "This time it was Kumiko. The wall clock said 11.30." | The Wind-up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami | @5_to_9_Jo |
| 11:31:00h | Albatross 8 passed over Pamlico Sound at 1131 local time. Its on-board programming was designed to trace thermal receptors over the entire visible horizon, interrogating everything in sight and locking on any signature that fit its acquisition parameters. As it continued on its orbit and passed over elements of the U.S. fleet, the New Jersey's jammers were aimed upward to scramble its signal. The satellite's tape systems dutifully recorded this. The jamming would tell the operators something about American electronic warfare systems. As Albatross 8 crossed the pole, the parabolic dish on its front tracked in on the carrier signal of another bird, the Iskra communications satellite. | The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | Cindeesan |
| 11:40:00h | Did escape occur to him? Did he examine to see if there were any practicable outlet from his prison? Did he think of escaping from it? Possibly; for once he walked slowly around the room. But the door was locked, and the window heavily barred with iron rods. He sat down again, and drew his journal from his pocket. On the line where these words were written, "21st December, Saturday, Liverpool," he added, "80th day, 11.40 a.m.," and waited. | Eighty Days Aournd the World | Jules Verne | JLM |
| 11:40:00h | During the sessions at Ito he read the Lotus Sutra on mornings of play, and he now seemed to be bringing himself to order through silent meditation. Then, quickly, there came a rap of stone on board. It was twenty minutes before noon. | The Master of Go | Yusunari Kawabata | Proto Plasm |
| 11:41:00h | Spagnola took a deep breath and started into the log again. "Eleven forty-one: large dog craps in Dr. Yamata's Aston Martin. Twelve oh-three: dog eats two, count 'em, two of Mrs. Wittingham's Siamese cats. She just lost her husband last week; this sort of put her over the edge. We had to call Dr. Yamata in off the putting green to give her a sedative. The personal-injury lawyer in the unit next to hers was home for lunch and he came over to help. He was talking class action then, and we didn't even know who owned the dog yet." | Coyote Blue | Christopher Moore | Cindeesan |
| 11:42:00h | 11:42 I'm doing fine. I'm doing well. I've got the Hoover on, I'm cruising along nicely- What was that? What just went up the Hoover? Why is it making that grinding noise? Have I broken it? | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 11:45:00h | She tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and thumbed hurriedly through her pink messages. .... Dr. Provetto, at 11:45 A.M. | Mistaken Identity | Lisa Scottoline | thecommonreader |
| 11:45:00h | I arrived at St.Gatien from Nice on Tuesday, the 14th of August. I was arrested at 11.45 a.m. on Thursday, the 16th by an agent de police and an inspector in plain clothes and taken to the Commissariat. | Epitaph for a Spy | Eric Ambler | translated |
| 11:45:00h | "...I waited till a quarter to twelve, and found then that I was in All Souls'. But I wasn't much frightened, for I thought it could be tomorrow as well." | Far from the madding crowd | Thomas Hardy | Rose_red |
| 11:45:00h | "I will tell you the time," said Septimus, very slowly, very drowsily, smiling mysteriously. As he sat smiling at the dead man in the grey suit the quarter struck, the quarter to twelve. | Mrs. Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | Patricia |
| 11:51:00h | The next day, at nine minutes of twelve o'clock noon, the last clock ran down and stopped. It was then placed in the town museum, as a collector's item, or museum piece, with proper ceremonies, addresses, and the like. | Lanterns and Lances (The Last Clock) | James Thurber | Ruthenium |
| 11:55:00h | It was 11:55 a.m. on April 30 | All the President's Men | Bernstein & Woodward | |
| 11:55:00h | What time did you arrive at the site? It was 11:55. I remember since I happened to glance at my watch when we got there. We rode our bicycles to the bottom of the hill, as far as we could go, then climbed the rest of the way on foot. | Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami | Mrtsblog |
| 11:58:00h | Two minutes before the clock struck noon, the savage baron was on the platform to inspect the preparation for the frightful ceremony of mid-day. The block was laid forth-the hideous minister of vengeance, masked and in black, with the flaming glaive in his hand, was ready. The baron tried the edge of the blade with his finger, and asked the dreadful swordsman if his hand was sure? A nod was the reply of the man of blood. The weeping garrison and domestics shuddered and shrank from him. There was not one there but loved and pitied the gentle lady. | Burlesques | William Makepeace Thackeray | Cindeesan |
| 11.00:00h | ON the morning following the events just narrated, Mrs. Arlington was seated at breakfast in a sweet little parlour of the splendid mansion which the Earl of Warrington had taken and fitted up for her in Dover Street, Piccadilly. It was about eleven o'clock; and the Enchantress was attired in a delicious deshabillé. With her little feet upon an ottoman near the fender, and her fine form reclining in a luxurious large arm-chair, she divided her attention between her chocolate and the columns of the Morning Herald. She invariably prolonged the morning's repast as much as possible, limply because it served to wile away the time until the hour for dressing arrived. | The Mysteries of London | G.W.M. Reynolds | frustrated artist |
| 11.45:00h | As he sat smiling, the quarter struck - the quarter to twelve. | Mrs Dalloway | Candide | |
| 12:00:00h | On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below. | The Bridge of San Luis Rey | Thornton Wilder | DickonBroom |
| 12:00:00h | 'There's nobody here!' I insisted. 'It was yourself, Mrs. Linton: you knew it a while since.' 'Myself!' she gasped, 'and the clock is striking twelve! | Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte | Bronte |
| 12:00:00h | 'There's nobody here!' I insisted. 'It was yourself, Mrs. Linton: you knew it a while since.' 'Myself!' she gasped, 'and the clock is striking twelve! | Wuthering Heights, ch 12 (forgot to give chapter no on last posting) | E Bronte | Bronte |
| 12:00:00h | It was precisely twelve o’clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps of smoke, and died up there among the seagulls. | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | anoif |
| 12:00:00h | "Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch." | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Sarah Churchwell |
| 12:00:00h | He had saved [the republic] and it was now in the present, alive now and everywhere in the present, and the hovering faces brightened and blurred about him, became the sound of a canal in the morning, the look of some roofs in the noon sun, and the fragrance of a certain evening flower. Here he was, home at last. Behind him were the mountains and the Sleeping Woman in the sky, and before him, like smoky flames in the sunset, the whole beautiful beloved city. | The Woman Who Had Two Navels | Nick Joaquin | Vincenz |
| 12:00:00h | It was precisely twelve o’clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps of smoke and died up there among the seagulls—twelve o’clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | JamesTheo |
| 12:00:00h | A Music numerous as space— But neighboring as Noon— | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 12:00:00h | This is Thomas Hardy's poem about loss of innocence and belief. The Oxen Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel "In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. | The Oxen | Thomas Hardy | Prinzbach |
| 12:00:00h | It was precisely twelve o'clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps of smoke and died up there among the seagulls, twelve o'clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street. Twelve was the hour of their appointment. | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | VaariC |
| 12:00:00h | A cheap little clock on the wall struck twelve hurriedly, and served to begin the conversation. | The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | terribleman |
| 12:00:00h | 'It will soon be an hour and a half,' said the girl who kept the records. The noonday siren blew. 'Exactly a minute,' she said, looking at the stopwatch of which she was so proud. | The Master of Go | Yasunari Kawabata | Proto Plasm |
| 12:00:00h | It was precisely twelve o'clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way wth the clouds and wisps of smoke and died up there among the seagulls - twelve o'clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on the bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street. | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | Candide |
| 12:00:00h | A few minutes' light around noon is all that you need to discover the error, and re-set the clock – provide that you bother to go up and make the observation. | Odalisque: The Baroque Cycle #3 | Neal Stephenson | clifh |
| 12:00:00h | Then came the stroke of noon, and all these working and professional people dispersed like a trampled anthill into all the streets and directions. The white bridge was swarming with nimble dots. And when you considered that each dot had a mouth with which it was now planning to eat lunch, you couldn't help bursting into laughter. | The Tanners | Robert Walser | jlr |
| 12:00:00h | Noon found him momentarily alone, while the family prepared lunch in the kitchen. The cracks in the ceiling widened into gaps. The locked wheels of his bed sank into new fault lines opening in the oak floor beneath the rug. At any moment the floor was going to give. | tinkers | Paul Harding | SalParadise650 |
| 12:00:00h and 15:00:00h | it was now about the sixth hour and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice , " Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he said this, he breathed his last. | The Bible , Luke 23:44 | Luke | mossopjan |
| 12:01:00h | It was the twelfth of December, the twelfth month. A was twelve. The electric clock/radio by his bedside table said 12:01. A was waiting for it to read 12:12, he hoped there would be some sense of cosmic rightness when it did. | Boy A | Jonathan Trigell | Jared |
| 12:02:15h | It had struck twelve o'clock two minutes and a quarter. The Baron's footman hastily seized a large goblet, and gasped with terror as he filled it with hot, spiced wine. "Tis past the hour, 'tis past,' he groaned in anguish, 'and surely I shall now get the red hot poker the Baron hath so often promised me, oh! Woe is me! Would that I had prepared the Baron's lunch before!' And without pausing a second he grasped in one hand the steaming goblet and flew along the lofty passages with the speed of a race horse. In less time than we take to relate it he reached the Baron's apartment, opened the door, and remained standing on tiptoe, not daring to move one way or the other, petrified with utter astonishment. | Crundle Castle | Lewis Carroll | Cindeesan |
| 12:03:00h | Suddenly I felt a great stillness in the air, then a snapping of tension. I glanced at my watch. Three minutes after midnight. I was breathing normally and my pen moved freely across the page. Whatever stalked me wasn’t quite as clever as I’d feared, I thought, careful not to pause in my work. | The Historian | Elizabeth Kostova | @nightwriter |
| 12:04:00h | Though by then it was by Tina's own desk clock 12:04P.M. I was always touched when, out of a morning's worth of repetition, secretaries continued to answer with good mornings for an hour or so into the afternoon, just as people often date things with the previous year well into February; sometimes they caught their mistake and went into a "This is not my day" or "Where is my head?" escape routine; but in a way they were right, since the true tone of afternoons does not take over in offices until nearly two. | Nicholson Baker | The Mezzanine | terribleman |
| 12:10:00h | They paid for only one room and kept Einstein with them because they were not going to need privacy for lovemaking. Exhausted, Travis barely managed to kiss Nora before falling into a deep sleep. He dreamed of things with yellow eyes, misshapen heads, and crocodile mouths full of sharks’ teeth. He woke five hours later, at twelve-ten Thursday afternoon. | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 12:11:00h | At 12:11 there was a knock on the door. It was Terry, A could tell. He hadn't known Terry long, but there was something calmer, more patient, that separated Terry's knocks from the rest of the staff. He knocked from genuine politeness, not formality. "Come in," A said, although the lock was on the other side. Terry did. "It's your mother," he said. "There's no easy way to say this." Though he had just used the easiest, because A now knew the rest. A’s face froze, as it tried to catch up, as it tried to register the news. Then it crumpled, and while he considered this fresh blow, the tears came. | Boy A | Jonathan Trigell | Jared |
| 12:15:00h | Very well, dear,' she said. 'I caught the 10.20 to Eastnor, which isn't a bad train, if you ever want to go down there. I arrived at a quarter past twelve, and went straight up to the house--you've never seen the house, of course? It's quite charming--and told the butler that I wanted to see Mr Ford on business. I had taken the precaution to find out that he was not there. He is at Droitwich.' | The Little Nugget | P. G. Wodehouse | Cindeesan |
| 12:20:00h | By twelve-twenty in the afternoon, Vince was seated in a rattan chair with comfortable yellow and green cushions at a table by the windows in that same restaurant. He’d spotted Haines on entering. The doctor was at another window table, three away from Vince, half-screened by a potted palm. Haines was eating shrimp and drinking margaritas with a stunning blonde. She was wearing white slacks and a gaily striped tube-top, and half the men in the place were staring at her. | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 12:20:00h | It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille day, yes it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don't know the people who will feed me | The Day Lady Died | Frank O'Hara | Kat Vapid |
| 12:24:00h | 12:24 My legs are in total agony. I've been kneeling on hard tiles, cleaning the bath, for what seems like hours. There are little ridges where the tiles have dug into my knees, and I'm boiling hot and the cleaning chemicals are making me cough. All I want is a rest. But I can't stop for a moment. I am so behind . . . | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 12:30:00h | 12.30 p.m. Lunch | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 12:30:00h | Tuesday, 12:30 P.M… Baker, California… Into the Ballantine Ale now, zombie drunk and nervous. I recognize this feeling: three or four days of booze, drugs, sun, no sleep and burned out adrenalin reserves – a giddy, quavering sort of high that means the crash is coming. But when? How much longer? This tension is part of the high. The possibility of physical and mental collapse is very real now… but collapse is out of the question; as a solution or even a cheap alternative, it is unacceptable. | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson | kevinegperry |
| 12:30:00h | At half past twelve, when Catherine’s anxious attention to the weather was over and she could no longer claim any merit from its amendment, the sky began voluntarily to clear. A gleam of sunshine took her quite by surprise; she looked round; the clouds were parting, and she instantly returned to the window to watch over and encourage the happy appearance. Ten minutes more made it certain that a bright afternoon would succeed, and justified the opinion of Mrs. Allen, who had “always thought it would clear up.” | Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen | alimison |
| 12:32:00h | 12:30 What is wrong with this bleach bottle? Which way is the nozzle pointing, anyway? I'm turning it round in confusion, peering at the arrows on the plastic . . . Why won't anything come out? OK, I'm going to squeeze it really, really hard- That nearly got my eye. 12:32 FUCK. What has it done to my HAIR? | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 12:35:00h | As surely as Apthorpe was marked for early promotion, Trimmer was marked for ignominy. That morning he had appeared at the precise time stated in orders. Everyone else had been waiting five minutes and Colour Sergeant Cork called out the marker just as Trimmer appeared. So it was twelve-thirty-five when they were dismissed. | Men At Arms, Bk 1, ch 1 | Evelyn Waugh | Bronte |
| 12:45:00h | Whilst we were speaking we were startled by a knock at the hall door, the double postman's knock of the telegraph boy. We all moved out to the hall with one impulse, and Van Helsing, holding up his hand to us to keep silence, stepped to the door and opened it. The boy handed in a dispatch. The Professor closed the door again, and after looking at the direction, opened it and read aloud. "Look out for D. He has just now, 12:45, come from Carfax hurriedly and hastened towards the South. He seems to be going the round and may want to see you: Mina" There was a pause, broken by Jonathan Harker's voice, "Now,, God be thanked, we shall soon meet!" Van Helsing turned to him quickly and said, "God will act in His own way and time. Do not fear, and do not rejoice as yet. For what we wish for at the moment may be our own undoings." | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Cindeesan |
| 12:45:00h | It is around quarter to one. No sunlight comes into the room now through the windows at right. Outside the day is fine but increasingly sultry, with a faint haziness in the air which softens the glare of the sun. | Long Day's Journey Into Night | Eugene O'Neil | SalParadise650 |
| 12:59:00h | And I had been looking at my watch since the train had started at 12.59 p.m. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 12.01:00h | And on all sides there were the clocks. Conrad noticed them immediately, at every street corner, over every archway, three quarters of the way up the sides of buildings, covering every conceivable angle of approach. Most of them were too high off the ground to be reached by anything less than a fireman's ladder and still retained their hands. All registered the same time: 12:01. Conrad looked at his wristwatch, noted that it was just 2:45. ‘‘They were driven by a master dock’’ Stacey told him. ‘‘When that stopped, they all ceased at the same moment. One minute after midnight, thirty-seven years ago.’’ | Chronopolis | J.G. Ballard | secretcinema |
| 12.30:00h | "You'll never believe this but (in Spain) they are two hours late for ever meal - two hours Fanny - (can we lunch at half-past twelve today?)" | Love in a Cold Climate | Nancy Mitford | thefatcontroller |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | SamLiu |
| 13:00:00h | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | 1984 | George Orwell | sfcockburn |
| 13:00:00h | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | 1984 | George Orwell | jesperlaerke |
| 13:00:00h | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | TheOrwellPrize |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" | 1984 | George Orwell | davidbarnett |
| 13:00:00h | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | teecosy |
| 13:00:00h | “Czarina Catherine reported entering Galatz at one o'clock to-day.” | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Violet_apple |
| 13:00:00h | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | 1984 | George Orwell | Marisa Birns |
| 13:00:00h | It was a cold, bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | Ninteen Eighty Four | George Orwell | Scolopax |
| 13:00:00h | The clocks were striking 13. | 1984 | George Orwell | Bear Tor |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." | 1984 | George Orwell | Dan Holloway |
| 13:00:00h | 'It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen as Winston Smith...' | 1984 | George Orwell | Marfi |
| 13:00:00h | The clock struck thirteen | ninteen eighty four | G. Orwell | Mr_sum_wun |
| 13:00:00h | clock was striking thirteen (quoting from memory: don't have the book to hand) | 1984, opening page | Orwell | Bronte |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." | Brave New World | George Orwell | DevonEmma |
| 13:00:00h | 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen'. | 1984 | George Orwell | katelordbrown |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a little after one o'clock when I got there, time for lunch, so I had it. The food was awful. But it would go on the expense account, and after I'd eaten I got out my notebook and put it down. Lunch $1.50. Taxi $1.00." | The Big Clock | Kenneth Fearing | kgittleson |
| 13:00:00h | "One o'clock pee em! Hello, Insert Name Here!" Said by the Disorganizer | Jingo | Terry Pratchett | k8wthrwx |
| 13:00:00h | The day-room floor gets cleared of tables and at one o'clock the doctor comes out of his office down the hall, nods once at the nurse as he goes past where he's watching out of her window, sits in his chair just to the left of the door. | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey | BelfastKoala |
| 13:00:00h | After 1 o'clock checks, Gretta always goes out for a smoke. | Girl, Interrupted | Susanna Kaysen | |
| 13:00:00h | 1.00 p.m. First afternoon class | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." | 1984 | George Orwell | Alcuin Edwards |
| 13:00:00h | That day it was one o'clock before John and Roger rowed across and went up to Dixon's farm for the milk and a new supply of eggs and butter. | Swallows and Amazons | Arthur Ransome | sipowicz |
| 13:00:00h | Many moons passed by. Did Baboon ever fly? Did he ever get to the sun? I’ve just heard today That he’s well on his way! He’ll be passing through Acton at one. | Silly Old Baboon | Spike Milligan | SimonH |
| 13:00:00h | Gottfried Rembke arrived at 1pm precisely. The moment he walked into the restaurant, handed his coat to the waiter, they knew it was him. The solid, stocky body, the gleaming pate, the open expression, the vigorous handshake: everything about him radiated ease and enthusiasm | Platform | Michel Houellebecq | terribleman |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." | Nineteen-Eighty-Four | George Orwell | ALdelta1 |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." | Nineteen Eighty Four | George Orwell | A Murray |
| 13:00:00h | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. | 1984 | George Orwell | ClaireH |
| 13:00:00h | "It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13." | 1984 | George Orwell | bluewombat |
| 13:00:00h | It was one o'clock. I bought some apples and a small pork pie and drove across the bridge to the other side of the riverbank in the direction of Orford Ness. | The Swimmer | Roma Tearne | crumbs |
| 13:00:00h | I got to Schmidt's early, feeling horribly nervous. At one o'clock sharp: Toni. She was looking at the menu she knew well - Schmorbraten? Schnitzel? - when he loomed over her. I had seen him come in. She looked up, through him, at me. 'Traitor.' Jamie, hovering, looking very big, said her pet name, a German diminutive chosen by her. Toni addressed the air. 'If he does not leave at once I shall tell the waiter that I am not sharing my table with this gentleman.' Jamie heard, said her name again, turned to go, I rose to go with him. Toni - with that concentration of will - said, 'YOU are lunching with me.' | Jigsaw | Sybille Bedford | Raylr |
| 13:00:00h | "I think," he said, with a triumphant smile, "that I may safely expect to find the person I seek in the dining-room, fair lady." "There may be more than one." "Whoever is there, as the clock strikes one, will be shadowed by one of my men; of these, one, or perhaps two, or even three, will leave for France to-morrow. One of these will be the `Scarlet Pimpernel.'" | The Scarlet Pimpernel | Baroness Orczy | alimison |
| 13:05:00h | “Samantha?” I can hear Trish approaching. “Um . . . hold on!” I hurry to the door, trying to block her view. “It's already five past one,” I can hear her saying a little sharply. “And I did ask, most clearly for . . .” Her voice trails off into silence as she reaches the kitchen door, and her whole face sags in astonishment. I turn and follow her gaze as she surveys the endless plates of sandwiches. “My goodness!” At last Trish finds her voice. “This is . . . this is very impressive!” | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 13:15:00h | The clock caught Miss LaFosse´s eye. ´Good heavens!´ she gasped. ´Look at the time. Quarter-past one. You must be starved.' She turned impetuously to Miss Pettigrew. | Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day | Winifred Watson | Elsje Heuff |
| 13:15:00h | ‘Monsieur has well slept this morning,’ he said, smiling. ‘What o’clock is it, Victor?’ asked Dorian Gray, sleepily. ‘One hour and a quarter, monsieur.’ | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | LaGracia |
| 13:16:00h | And the first stop had been at 1.16 p.m. which was 17 minutes later. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 13:20:00h | "I care for nothing now," he answered hotly, "except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. I would sell my soul to do it!" "Oh, hush, hush, my child" said Van Helsing. "God does not purchase souls in this wise, and the Devil, though he may purchase, does not keep faith. But God is merciful and just, and knows your pain and your devotion to that dear Madam Mina. Think you, how her pain would be doubled, did she but hear your wild words. Do not fear any of us, we are all devoted to this cause, and today shall see the end. The time is coming for action. Today this Vampire is limit to the powers of man, and till sunset he may not change. It will take him time to arrive here, see it is twenty minutes past one, and there are yet some times before he can hither come, be he never so quick. What we must hope for is that my Lord Arthur and Quincey arrive first." | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Cindeesan |
| 13:20:00h | Kamarov, signal to Purga: 'Diving at—,'" he checked his watch, "'—1320 hours. Exercise OCTOBER FROST begins as scheduled. You are released to other assigned duties. We will return as scheduled." Kamarov worked the trigger on the blinker light to transmit the message. The Purga responded at once, and Ramius read the flashing signal unaided: "IF THE WHALES DON'T EAT YOU. GOOD LUCK TO RED OCTOBER!" | The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | Cindeesan |
| 13:23:00h | And when we got to Swindon Mother had keys to the house and we went in and she said, 'Hello?' but there was no one there because it was 1:23pm. | The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightime | Mark Haddon | crumbs |
| 13:23:00h | The clock marked twenty-three minutes past one. He was suddenly full of agitation, yet hopeful. She had come! Who could tell what she would say? She might offer the most natural explanation of her late arrival. Félicie entered the room, her hair in disorder, her eyes shining, her cheeks white, her bruised lips a vivid red; she was tired, indifferent, mute, happy and lovely, seeming to guard beneath her cloak, which she held wrapped about her with both hands, some remnant of warmth and voluptuous pleasure. | A Mummer's Tale | Anatole France | Cindeesan |
| 13:25:00h | The video shop next door was one I'd patronized a few times. Something called Hard Times was on the twenty-seven-inch monitor at the entrance. Charles Bronson was a bare-knuckle boxer, James Coburn his manager. I stepped inside and asked to see the-fight scene again. The woman behind the counter looked bored. I offered her one of the gateaux while Bronson battered a bald-headed opponent. The ringside crowd expected the brute to win, but they didn't know that Bronson never loses. I got up to leave."Why don't you stick around and watch the whole thing?" invited Mrs. Video Shop. I'd really have liked to, I told her, if it weren't for the things I had in the drier. I cast an eye at my watch. One-twenty-five. The drier had already stopped. She made one last pitch. "Three classic Hitchcock pictures coming in next week.” | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | Cindeesan |
| 13:30:00h | "She was a a sticker. A clock away in the town struck half past one." | Brighton Rock | Graham Greene | |
| 13:30:00h | Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day, counselled submission, upheld authority, and pointed out in chorus the supreme advantages of a sense of proportion, until the mound of time was so far diminished that a commercial clock, suspended above a shop in Oxford Street, announced, genially and fraternally, as if it were a pleasure to Messrs Rigby and Lowndes to give the information gratis, that it was half-past one. | Mrs dalloway | Virginia Woolf | Candide |
| 13:30:00h | Lupin not having come down, I went up again at half-past one, and said we dined at two; he said he "would be there." | The Diary of a Nobody | George and Weedon Grossmith | JLM |
| 13:30:00h | This hymn-singing seemed to me just as silly as the port wine they gave us before the match; indeed 'Onward Christian Soldiers' and port wine are still inextricably mixed together in my mind. We had our usual enormous dinner at 1.30; and as the match was at 2.15 we used to get all ready first, even to strapping our hockey-pads on to our legs before we set to work to consume vast platefuls of pea-soup, great chunks of roast beef and vegetables, and slabs of suet pudding and jam. Then each member of the team was solemnly given a glassful of sweet and sticky port, and we rushed straight from the table out to the hockey field. I found the port extremely nasty and difficult to swallow; and everyone complained that it made them feel sick; still, it was an honour to get it, so we drank it gratefully. But if we won the match - and we generally did win – it must have been that the spiritual uplift imparted to us by 'Onward Christian Soldiers' was able to overcome even the acute discomfort of the mixture in our insides. | Period Piece | Gwen Raverat | Raylr |
| 13:32:20h | 'At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty-two ... and twenty seconds. 'Beep ... beep ... beep.' Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh. | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:32:30h | He switched the incoming signal through from the Sub-Etha Net to the ship's superb hi-fi system, and the odd, rather stilted, sing-song voice spoke out with remarkable clarity around the cabin. 'At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty-two ... and thirty seconds.' | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:32:40h | For the length of time he had in mind, the question of power consumption became significant. He didn't want a murder on his conscience. 'At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty-two ... and forty seconds.' | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:32:50h | He checked around the small ship. He walked down the short corridor. 'At the third stroke ...' He stuck his head into the small, functional, gleaming steel bathroom. 'it will be ...' It sounded fine in there. He looked into the tiny sleeping quarters. '... one ... thirty-two ...' It sounded a bit muffled. There was a towel hanging over one of the speakers. He took down the towel. '... and fifty seconds.' Fine. | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:33:50h | He waited for the green light to show and then opened the door again on to the now empty cargo hold. '... one ... thirty-three ... and fifty seconds.' Very nice. | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:34:00h | He then went and had a last thorough examination of the emergency suspended animation chamber, which was where he particularly wanted it to be heard. 'At the third stroke it will be one ... thirty ... four ... precisely.' | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:34:20h | 'At the third stroke it will be ...' He tiptoed out and returned to the control cabin. '... one ... thirty-four and twenty seconds.' The voice sounded as clear as if he was hearing it over a phone in London, which he wasn't, not by a long way. | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13:39:00h | And it was now 1.39 p.m. which was 23 minutes after the stop, which mean that we would be at the sea if the train didn't go in a big curve. But I didn't know if it went in a big curve. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 13:50:00h | Rahel's toy wristwatch had the time painted on it. Ten to two. One of her ambitions was to own a watch on which she could change the time whenever she wanted to (which according to her was what Time was meant for in the first place). | The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy | A Reader |
| 13:59:00h | 'At the third stroke it will be ...' For twenty minutes he sat and watched as the gap between the ship and Epun closed, as the ship's computer teased and kneaded the numbers that would bring it into a loop around the little moon, and close the loop and keep it there, orbiting in perpetual obscurity. 'One ... fifty-nine ...' | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 13.13:00h | The next day the sky was again overcast; but on Sunday, the 28th of June, the antepenultimate day of the month, with the change of the moon came a change of weather. The sun poured a flood of light down the crater. Every hillock, every rock and stone, every projecting surface, had its share of the beaming torrent, and threw its shadow on the ground. Amongst them all, Scartaris laid down his sharp-pointed angular shadow which began to move slowly in the opposite direction to that of the radiant orb. My uncle turned with it. At noon, being at its least extent, it came and softly fell upon the edge of the middle chimney. "There it is! There it is!" shouted the Professor. "Now for the centre of the globe!" he added in Danish. I looked at Hans. "Forüt!" was his tranquil answer. "Forward!" replied my uncle. It was thirteen minutes past one. | Journey to the Centre of the Earth | Jules Verne | frustrated artist |
| 14:00:00h | The Home for Aged Persons is at Marengo, some fifty miles from Algiers. With the two -o'clock bus I should get there well before nightfall. Then I can spend the night there, keeping the usual vigil beside the body, and be back here by tomorrow evening. | The Outsider | Camus | translated |
| 14:00:00h | I caught the two o'clock bus. It was very hot. I ate at Céleste's restaurant as usual. They all felt very sorry for me and Céleste told me, 'There's no one like a mother'. | The Outsider | Albert Camus | AggieH |
| 14:00:00h | 'She could have fired the jig, and he could have kept on picking up his packages at the old time, two o'clock. As it was, he had almost been arrested.' | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | traverso1685 |
| 14:00:00h | "The old people's home is at Marengo, fifty miles from Algiers. I'll catch the two o'clock bus and get there in the afternoon.".... "I caught the two o'clock bus. It was very hot." | The Outsider | Albert Camus | LizMo |
| 14:00:00h | At two o'clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit and left word with the butler that if any one phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool. | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Sarah Churchwell |
| 14:00:00h | "The bells of St. Maria struck two as she came out from the subway station on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. Before hurrying on towards the Maria Square she halted and lit a cigarette." Opening lines from my latest Martin Beck mystery, picked up within seconds of reading about the blog in the review. | The Locked Room | Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö | Ludmilla59 |
| 14:00:00h | At two, the snowplows were in action in Lillestrom. | The Snowman | Jo Nesbo | |
| 14:00:00h | When Salander woke up it was 2.00 on Saturday afternoon and a doctor was poking at her. | The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest | Stieg Larsson | |
| 14:00:00h | At approximately 1400 hours a pair of enemy Skyhawks came flying in at deck level out of nowhere. | Black Swan Green | David Mitchell | Sheps |
| 14:00:00h | At about two o' clock the owners young wife came, carrying a handleless cup and a pot with a quilted cover, to where I was still lying disconsolate | A Single Pebble | John Hershey | Proto Plasm |
| 14:00:00h | The next day was Saturday and, now that Moon was done, I decided to bring the job to its end. So I sent word that I shouldn't be able to umpire for the team at Steeple Sinderby and, after working through the morning, came down about two o'clock. | A Month in the Country | JL Carr | Eugenius |
| 14:00:00h | It was almost two o’clock, but nothing moved, Stari Teočak was silent and so empty it seemed abandoned, and yet Tijmen constantly felt he was being observed by invisible eyes. | King of Tuzla | Arnold Jansen op de Haar | Bernadette |
| 14:05:00h | ...and at five past two on 17 September of that same unforgettable year 1916, I was in the Muryovo hospital yard, standing on trampled withered grass, flattened by the September rain. | A Country Doctor's Notebook | Mikhail Bulgakov | snowfinch |
| 14:13:50h | 'At the third stroke, it will be two ... thirteen ... and fifty seconds.' He giggled and sniggered. He would have laughed out loud but he didn't have room. | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 14:15:00h | 2.15 p.m. Second afternoon class | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 14:15:00h | I had a date with her next day at 2.15 P.M. in my own rooms, but it was less successful, she seemed to have grown less juvenile, more of a woman overnight. A cold I caught from her led me to cancel a fourth assignment, nor was I sorry to break an emotional series that threatened to burden me with heart-rending fantasies and peter out in dull disappointment. So let her remain, sleek, slender Monique, as she was for a minute or two: a delinquent nymphet shining through the matter-of-fact young whore. | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | terribleman |
| 14:15:00h | "I had a date with her next day at 2.15 P.M. In my own rooms, but it was less successful, she seemed to have grown less juvenile, more of a woman overnight." | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | MichelledV |
| 14:20:00h | She looked at her watch and it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose but must get ready at once. | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | cathannabel |
| 14:20:00h | 'looked at her watch and it was twenty minutes past two | A tale of two cities | Charles Dickens | |
| 14:20:00h | On a search-warrant being issued for the examination of his room, clothes, and so forth, it was discovered that he had destroyed all his papers, and rearranged all his possessions, on the very afternoon of the disappearance. The watch found at the Weir was challenged by the jeweller as one he had wound and set for Edwin Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that same afternoon; and it had run down, before being cast into the water; and it was the jeweller's positive opinion that it had never been re-wound. This would justify the hypothesis that the watch was taken from him not long after he left Mr. Jasper's house at midnight, in company with the last person seen with him, and that it had been thrown away after being retained some hours. Why thrown away? | The Mystery of Edwin Drood | Charles Dickens | frustrated artist |
| 14:20:00h | She looked at her watch, it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose but must get ready at once. | A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | kbergen |
| 14:20:00h | Inevitable, implacable, the rainstorm wept itself out. She saw Tom look at his watch. 'What time is it?' 'Twenty past two. Want to go back to the hotel for a while?' 'All right.' They walked out of the gardens and down the rue de Vaugirard. This holiday, unlike those holidays long ago, would not end with her sleeping at home. Two nights from now I will be high over the Atlantic Ocean and on Saturday I will be walking around in the Other Place. I am going to America. I am starting my life over again. But as she said these words to herself, she found it hard to imagine what the new life would be like. And, again, she was afraid. | The Doctor's Wife | Brian Moore | Raylr |
| 14:25:00h | Gary shut himself inside his office and flipped through the messages. Caroline had called at 1:35, 1:40, 1:50, 1:55, and 2:10; it was now 2:25. He pumped his fist in triumph. Finally, finally, some evidence of desperation. | The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | |
| 14:30:00h | At 2.30 p.m. on the 13th inst. began to shadow Sir Bobadil the Ostrich, whom I suspect of being the criminal. Shadowing successful. Didn't lose sight of him once. | The Wind on the Moon | Eric Linklater | @nostalgia4books |
| 14:30:00h | May 14th 1800. Wm and John set off into Yorkshire after dinner at 1/2 past 2 o'clock, cold pork in their pockets. I left them at the turning of the Low-wood bay under the trees. My heart was so full that I could barely speak to W. when I gave him a farewell kiss. | The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth | ||
| 14:30:00h | At half past two the same afternoon the boy and the elderly man are standing in the room directly above the Inner Office and Waiting-Room. | Corker's Freedom | John Berger | jrsd |
| 14:30:00h | Ach! It's 2:30. Look how the time is flying. And it's still so much to do today.. It's dishes to clean, dinner to defrost, and my pills I haven't yet counted. I don't get it... Why didn't the Jews at least try to resist? It wasn't so easy like you think. Everybody was so starving and frightened, and tired they couldn't believe even what's in front of their eyes. | Maus | Art Spiegelman | Elsje Heuff |
| 14:30:00h | It was half-past two o'clock when the knock came. I took my courage a deux mains and waited. In a few minutes Mary opened the door, and announced "Dr. Van Helsing". | Dracula | Bram Stoker | alimison |
| 14:30:00h | It was half-past two in the afternoon. The sun hung in the faded blue sky like a burning mirror, and away beyond the paddocks the blue mountains quivered and leapt like sea. Sid wouldn't be back until half-past ten. He had ridden over to the township with four of the boys to help hunt down the young fellow who'd murdered Mr. Williamson. Such a dreadful thing! | Millie | Katherine Mansfield | alimison |
| 14:36:00h | I look at my watch. Two thirty-six. all I've got left today is take in the laundry and fix dinner. | The Elephant Vanishes | Haruki Murakami | kushti |
| 14:37:00h | There was nothing to do but keep on talking about the news of the day, wondering what Hélène or my paredros were doing, what Juan and Tell were up to and where, all of that until twenty minutes to three so as not to arrive at the museum too early. Interrupting his stroll along the length of the room, changing direction now and again along the width, even though there was not much space to move in that direction, and telling Nicole about Mr. Whitlow and Harold Haroldson, how Harold Haroldson had turned out to be Mr. Whitlow's relative and how via Mr. Whitlow the oilcloth stone had become mixed up with the active gathering of the anonymous neurotics in the second gallery of the museum. Also (since he had to keep on talking about something until twenty minutes to three), Marrast thought it was already time to start thinking about work on the statue, and he had a fairly precise idea of what the imaginary effigy of Vercingetorix was going to be like--that is, as a first step, the pedestal-statue order would be inverted, somewhat like the structure of the Doges' Palace in Venice. | 62: A Model Kit | Julio Cortázar | jlr |
| 14:40:00h | If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn when she's late? 'We better hurry', I said. 'The show starts at two-forty.' | The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | Elsje Heuff |
| 14:45:00h | He never came down till a quarter to three. | The Diary of a Nobody | George and Weedon Grossmith | JLM |
| 14:45:00h | Pull the other one, and tell it to the marines, and don't make me laugh, and fuck off out of it, and all that, but the fact remained that it was still only two forty-five'. | The Pregnant Window | Martin Amis | John Mullan |
| 14:45:00h | In the courtyard an old woman is standing and holding a clock in her hands. I walk through, past the old woman, stop and ask her: -- What time is it? -- Have a look -- the old woman says to me. I look and see that there are no hands on the clock. -- There are no hands here -- I say. The old woman looks at the clock face and tells me: -- It's now a quarter to three. | The Old Woman | Daniil Kharms | |
| 14:50:00h | Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea? | The Old Vicarage, Grantchester | Rupert Brooke | lemonthyme |
| 14:50:00h | "The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?" | The Old Vicarage: Grantchester | Rupert Brooke | Alcuin Edwards |
| 14:50:00h | And is there honey still for tea? Stands the Church clock at ten to three? | The Old Vicarage, Grantchester | Rupert Brooke | SamMason |
| 14:55:00h | The superior, the very reverend John Conmee SJ reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. | Ulysses | James Joyce | saintchanel |
| 14.32:00h | Like 2.32 p.m., Beecher and Avalon, L3 R2 (which meant left three blocks, right two) 2:35 p.m., and you wondered how you could pick up one box, then drive 5 blocks in 3 minutes and be finished cleaning out another box. | Post Office | Charles Bukowski | Miles Teheux |
| 14.35:00h | Like 2.32 p.m., Beecher and Avalon, L3 R2 (which meant left three blocks, right two) 2:35 p.m., and you wondered how you could pick up one box, then drive 5 blocks in 3 minutes and be finished cleaning out another box. | Post Office | Charles Bukowski | Miles Teheux |
| 14.55:00h | In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2.55, when you know you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul. | Life, the universe and everything | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 15:00:00h | The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it. | Casino Royale | Ian Fleming | nilpferd |
| 15:00:00h | "Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do." | Nausea | Jean-Paul Sartre | danielkramb |
| 15:00:00h | And the sound of the bell flooded the room with its melancholy wave; which receded, and gathered itself together to fall once more, when she heard, distractedly, something fumbling, something scratching at the door. Who at this hour? Three, good Heavens! Three already! For with overpowering directness and dignity the clock struck three; and she heard nothing else; but the door handle slipped around and in came Richard. What a surprise! In came Richard, holding out flowers. | Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | RachaelSweet |
| 15:00:00h | The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when Alisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had made pretty good progress with it - for her. She would arrive some time or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | Mark Twain | Blockhead |
| 15:00:00h | . It was three o'clock in the beautiful breezy autumn day when Mr. Casaubon drove off to his Rectory at Lowick, only five miles from Tipton; and Dorothea, who had on her bonnet and shawl, hurried along the shrubbery and across the park that she might wander through the bordering wood with no other visible companionship than that of Monk, the Great St. Bernard dog, who always took care of the young ladies in their walks | Middlemarch, ch.3 | George Eliot | Bronte |
| 15:00:00h | [Austerlitz is talking of the extermination of Jews in Theresianstadt, Nov. 1943; it's an immensely long sentence, from which this is extracted:] outside the gates in the open fields of Bohusevice basin, when the entire population of the ghetto...was marched out after assembling in the barracks yards at dawn to be drawn up in block formation behind numbered wooden boards, and there, throughout the whole of this cold and damp day, as the fog drifted over the fields,they were forced to wait, guarded by the armed police and not permitted to step out of line even for a minute, for the SS men to arrive, as they eventually did on their motorbikes at three o'clock...[p. 338, hardback edn] | Austerlitz | WG Sebald | Bronte |
| 15:00:00h | At three o'clock on the afternoon of that same day, he called on her. She held out her two hands, smiling in her usual charming, friendly way; and for a few seconds they looked deep into each other's eyes. | Bel-Ami | Guy de Maupassant [translated by Douglas Parmee] | |
| 15:00:00h | "Remember," they shouted, "battle at three o'clock sharp. There's no time to lose." | Swallows and Amazons | Arthur Ransome | Rose_red |
| 15:00:00h | “Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.” | To kill a mockingbird | Harper Lee | |
| 15:00:00h | On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his knees. | Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert | terribleman |
| 15:00:00h | Three o'clock is the perfect time in Cham, because anything is possible. You can still ski, but also respectably start drinking, the shops have just reopened, the sun is still up. Three o'clock is never too late or too early. | Cham | Jonathan Trigell | Jared |
| 15:00:00h | M. Madeleine usually came at three o'clock, and as punctuality was kindness, he was punctual. | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo | kbergen |
| 15:00:00h | He walks into the Hospital for Broken Things at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. That was the arrangement. If he came in after six o'clock, he was to head straight for the house in Sunset Park. | Sunset Park | Paul Auster | Louis Kim |
| 15:00:00h | At three on the Wednesday afternoon, that bit of the painting was completed. | The Moonstone | Wilkie Collins | JLM |
| 15:00:00h | At three o’clock precisely I was at Baker Street, but Holmes had not yet returned. | A Scandal in Bohemia | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Out of Print |
| 15:00:00h | Feelings of virtue breed spontaneously in the fertile soil of suffering. The more one suffers, the more virtuous one must be. The Jesus complex was entangled in feelings of superiority, the superiority of the underdog who considers himself above his oppressors, with their tyranny and blindness. Ditched by the woman I loved, I exalted my suffering into a sign of greatness (lying collapsed on a bed at three in the afternoon), and hence protected myself from experiencing my grief as the outcome of what was at best a mundane romantic break-up. Chloe's departure may have killed me, but it had at least left me in glorious possession of the moral high ground. I was a martyr. | Essays in Love | Alain de Botton | @alanawhitman |
| 15:00:00h | Today was the day Alex had appointed for her 'punishment'. I became increasingly nervous as the hour of three o'clock approached. I was alone in the house, and paced restlessly from room to room, glancing at the clocks in each of them. | Deaf Sentence | David Lodge | traverso1685 |
| 15:00:00h | I had a three o’clock class in psychology, the first meeting of the semester, and I suspected I was going to miss it. I was right. Victoria made a real ritual of the whole thing, clothes coming off with the masturbatory dalliance of a strip show, the covers rolling back periodically to show this patch of flesh or that, strategically revealed. I discovered her breasts one at a time, admired the tattoo on her ankle (a backward S that proved, according to her, that she was a reincarnated Nordic skald), and saw that she really was a redhead in the conventional sense. Her lips were dry, her tongue unstoppable, her hair a primal encounter. When we were done, she sat up and I saw that her breasts pointed in two different directions, and that was human in a way I can’t really express, a very personal thing, as if she was letting me in on a secret that was more intimate that the sex itself. I was touched. I admit it. I looked at those mismatched breasts and they meant more to me than her lips and her eyes and the deep thrumming instrument of her voice, if you know what I mean. | "Achates McNeil" | T.C. Boyle | |
| 15:00:00h | Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. | Nausea | Jean-Paul Sartre | Lisa Annaly |
| 15:07:00h | The next day was grey, threatening rain. He was there at seven minutes past three. The clock on the church over the way pointed to it. They had arranged to were at three fifteen. Therefore, if she had been there when he came, she would have been eight minutes before her time. But, very sensibly,she was not there eight minutes before her time. Nor was there any reason why she should be there eight minutes before her time. Nor yet five minutes before her time. Nor yet four, three, two minutes before her time. And she was not. He applauded her discretion. At a quarter past, however, he had a right to expect her. She had not come." | Twenty thousand streets under the sky | Patrick Hamilton | frustrated artist |
| 15:0h0:00 | 'I gotta get uptown by three o'clock.' | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | traverso1685 |
| 15:13:00h | The lift moved. It was thirteen minutes past three. The bell gave out its ping. Two men stepped out of the lift, Alan Norman and another man. Tony Blair walked into the office. Bowstock followed. They stood at reception. Maggie approached and shook hands. Blair said something, she and Bowstock laughed. She sat down again. The group began to cross the room. Bowstock was talking; Blair listened, frowning with attention and interest. The female reporter asked a question. Blair stopped and faced the cameras. He used his hands to reinforce the key words of his response. Bowstock nodded sagely, looking down at the floor. A quip and they were moving again. Lee hit send on his computer and adjusted the knife in his sleeve. They were at his desk. “And this is the hub of what we look like. This is our Design Team, our Head Designer, Lee Coller.” | Virtual Assassin | Simon Kearns | Skeptic Sam |
| 15:14:00h | A signal sounded. "There's the 3.14 up," said Perks. "You lie low till she's through, and then we'll go up along to my place, and see if there's any of them strawberries ripe what I told you about." | The Railway Children | Edith Nesbit | JLM |
| 15:14:00h | I shall be back at exactly THREE fourteen, for our hour of revery together, real sweet revery darling | On the Road | Jack Kerouac | Irwan |
| 15:15:00h | July 3: 5 3/4 hours. Little done today. Deepening lethargy, dragged myself over to the lab, nearly left the road twice. Concentrated enough to feed the zoo and get the log up to date. Read through the operating manuals Whitby left for the last time, decided on a delivery rate of 40 rontgens/min., target distance of 530 cm. Everything is ready now. Woke 11:05. To sleep 3:15. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 15:15:00h | I got out my old clothes. I put wool socks over my regular socks and took my time lacing up the boots. I made a couple of tuna sandwiches and some double-decker peanut-butter crackers. I filled my canteen and attached the hunting knife and the canteen to my belt. As I was going out the door, I decided to leave a note. So I wrote: "Feeling better and going to Birch Creek. Back soon. R. 3:15." That was about four hours from now. | Where I'm Calling From | Raymond Carver | Cindeesan |
| 15:23:00h | Three twenty-three! Is that all? Doesn't time - no, I've already said that, thought that. I sit and watch the seconds change on the watch. I used to have a limited edition Rolex worth the price of a new car but I lost it. It was present from...Christine? No, Inez. She got fed up with me always having to ask other people what the time was; embarrassed on my behalf. | Espedair Street | Iain Banks | talkietoaster |
| 15:23:00h | The Grand High Witch was starting to talk again. "I am now going to prrrove to you", she said, "that this rrrecipe is vurrrking to perrrfection. You understand, of course, that you can set the alarm-clock to go off at any time you like. It does not have to be nine o'clock. So yesterday I am personally prrree-paring a small qvantity of the magic formula in order to give to you a public demonstration. But I am making vun small change in the rrrecipe. Before I am rrroasting the alarm-clock, I am setting it to go off, not at nine o'clock the next morning, but at half-past thrrree the next afternoon. Vhich means half-past thrrree this afternoon. And that", she said, glancing at her wrist-watch, "is in prrree-cisely seven minutes' time!" | The Witches | Roald Dahl | alimison |
| 15:27:00h | And she rang the Reverend Peters and he came into school at 3.27 pm and he said, 'So, young man, are we ready to roll?' And I did Paper 1 of my Maths A level sitting in the Art Room. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 15:27:00h | And she rang the Reverend Peters and he came into school at 3.27pm and he said, 'So, young man, are we ready to roll?' | The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightime | Mark Haddon | crumbs |
| 15:30:00h | 3.30 p.m. Catch school bus home | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 15:30:00h | I must have completed my packing with time to spare, for when the knock came on my door at half past three precisely, I had been sitting in my chair waiting for a good while. I opened the door to a young Chinese man, perhaps not even twenty, dressed in a gown, his hat in his hand. 'I am your driver, sir' he announced softly. If you have suitcase, I will carry.' | When We Were Orphans | Kazuo Ishiguro | Raylr |
| 15:35:00h | If Me flashed a little crazy after a restless night of smoking & prowling the darkened house with owl-eyes alert to suspicious noises outside & on the roof, it didn’t inevitably mean she’d still be in such a state when the schoolbus deposited Wolfie back home at 3:35 P.M. | I Am No One You Know: Stories | Joyce Carol Oates | nightwriter |
| 15:40:00h | At three-forty, Cliff called to report that Dilworth and his lady friend were sitting on the deck of the Amazing Grace, eating fruit and sipping wine, reminiscing a lot, laughing a little. “From what we can pick up with directional microphones and from what we can see, I’d say they don’t have any intention of going anywhere. Except maybe to bed. They sure do seem to be a randy old pair.” “Stay with them,” Lem said. “I don’t trust him.” | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 15:45:00h | One meal is enough now, topped up with a glucose shot. Sleep is still 'black', completely unrefreshing. Last night I took a 16 mm. film of the first three hours, screened it this morning at the lab. The first true-horror movie. I looked like a half-animated corpse. Woke 10:25. To sleep 3:45. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 15:49:00h | 3.49 p.m. Get off school bus at home | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 15:49:00h | But there were more bad things than good things. And one of them was that Mother didn't get back from work til 5.30 pm so I had to go to Father's house between 3.49 pm and 5.30 pm because I wasn't allowed to be on my own and Mother said I didn't have a choice so I pushed the bed against the door in case Father tried to come in. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 15:50:00h | 3.50 p.m. Have juice and snack | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 15:55:00h | 3.55 p.m. Give Toby food and water | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 15:57:00h | It was close upon four before the door opened, and a drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked into the room. Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers in the use of disguises, I had to look three times before I was certain that it was indeed he. | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle | Dr Watson |
| 15.37:00h | The explosion was now officially designated an "Act of God". But, thought Dirk, what god? And why? What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15.37 flight to Oslo? | The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 16:00:00h | I only found out much later that those flowers were called Four O’clock, and were not magic at all. The magic was in the seed, waiting to be watered and cared for, the real magic was life. | Ghost Generations | Susan May Gudge | sweets |
| 16:00:00h | Her eyes caught the kryptonite glow of the digital clock on the front of the microwave. Honest and true, the numbers spelled out the time although she, for a moment, found its calculation to be somehow erroneous. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. | Blood Bride | Susan May Gudge | sweets |
| 16:00:00h | A little after four o'clock, Pippa meandered over to Dot's house carrying a bottle of wine she had been keeping in reserve and wondering if she could possibly be pregnant in spite of the vestigial coil still lodged in her uterus like astronaut litter abandoned on the moon. | The Private Lives of Pippa Lee | Rebecca Miller | BelfastKoala |
| 16:00:00h | The horrifying R.N. wipes Gately's face off as best she can with her hand and says she'll try to fit him in for a sponge bath before she goes off shift at 1600h., at which Gately goes rigid with dread. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 16:00:00h | Four o,clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement,revision, reading from four to five. Short snooze ...from five to six. Affair of agent and sealed letter from seven to eight. At eight, en route. | The Woman in White - The Story Continued | Walter Hartwright VII | |
| 16:00:00h | He looked at his watch: it was nearly 4. He helped Delphine to her feet and led her down a passage to a rear door that gave on to the hospital garden. | The Blue Afternoon | William Boyd | |
| 16:00:00h | As he turned off towards the fishing village of Cellardyke, the familiar pips announced the four o'clock news. The comforting voice of the newsreader began the bulletin. 'The convicted serial killer and former TV chat show host Jacko Vance has begun his appeal against conviction. | The Last Temptation | Val McDermid | orlando |
| 16:00:00h | 4.00 p.m. Take Toby out of his cage | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 16:00:00h | Djerzinski arrived punctually at four o’clock. Desplechin had asked to see him. The case was intriguing. Certainly, it was common for a researcher to take a year’s sabbatical to work in Norway or Japan, or one of those sinister countries where middle aged people committed suicide en masse. | Atomised | Michel Houellebecq | terribleman |
| 16:00:00h | In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousand electric clocks simultaneously struck four. Discarnate voices called from the trumpet mouths. "Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off …" | Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | Irv |
| 16:00:00h | Charmian woke at four and sensed the emptiness of the house. | Memento Mori | Muriel Spark | HannahFreeman |
| 16:00:00h | In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2.55, when you know you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul. | Life, the universe and everything | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 16:00:00h | He played for twenty-two days, just as he said he would. Every day at four o'cock in the afternoon, regardless of how much fighting was going on around him. | The Cellist Of Sarajevo | Steven Galloway | crumbs |
| 16:00:00h | Four o'clock: when time in the city quivers on its axis - the day not yet spent, the wheels of evening just beginning to turn. The handover hour, was how Marius liked to think of it. | The Act of Love | Howard Jacobson | Bethan Ball |
| 16:00:00h | Towards four o'clock the condition of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing, Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and intrepid, shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: "Nassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!" | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo | M Marsh |
| 16:00:00h | I doubt whether anyone was commissioned to send the news along the actual telegraph, and yet Mrs. Proudie knew it before four o'clock. But she did not know it quite accurately.'Bishop', she said, standing at her husband's study door. 'They have committed that man to gaol. There was no help for them unless they had forsworn themselves.' | The Last Chronicle of Barset | Anthony Trollope | Elsje Heuff |
| 16:00:00h | It was my turn to cook the evening meal so I didn't linger in the common room. It was exactly 4 o'clock as I made my way out of the building, and doors opened behind and before me, discharging salvos of vocal babble and the noise of chair-legs scraping on wooden floors. | Deaf Sentence | David Lodge | traverso 1685 |
| 16:00:00h | Four o'clock: wedge-shaped gardens lie Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. | Sad Steps | Philip Larkin | Letstalkaboutbooks |
| 16:00:00h | "What else can I answer, When the lights come on at four At the end of another year" | “Toads Revisited” - The Whitsun Weddings | Philip Larkin | mph1985 |
| 16:00:00h | ... when they all sat down to table at four o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, he had secured his lady, engaged her mother's consent, and was not only in the rapturous profession of the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, one of the happiest of men. | Sense and Sensibility | Jane Austen | alimison |
| 16:03:00h | She read the page carefully and then said, '16.03 - cat goes to the toilet in front garden.' | What was Lost | Catherine O'Flynn | DennisPreston |
| 16:05:00h | I had met Irwin on the steps of the Widener Library. I was standing at the top of the long flight, overlooking the red brick buildings that walled the snow-filled quad and preparing to catch the trolley back to the asylum, when a tall young man with a rather ugly and bespectacled, but intelligent face, came up and said, 'Could you please tell me the time?' I glanced at my watch. 'Five past four.' | The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath | pbj |
| 16:07:00h | Dr. Urbino caught the parrot around the neck with a triumphant sigh: ça y est. But he released him immediately because the ladder slipped from under his feet and for an instant he was suspended in air and then he realised that he had died without Communion, without time to repent of anything or to say goodbye to anyone, at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday. | Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Roadsister |
| 16:10:00h | She looks at the clock. She's in the kitchen. A minute left. She waits. It's ten-past four. She picks up the eclair. She licks the cream out of it. She watches herself.It's fuckin' stupid. But. She bites into the chocolate, and the pastry that's been softened by the cream. Jack's not home yet. Leannes's at work. Paula will be leaving, herself, in a bit. She's a year off the drink. Exactly a year. She looks at the clock. A year and a minute. | Paula Spencer | Roddy Doyle | Cindeesan |
| 16:10:00h | 1610h. E.T.A Weight room. Freestyle circuits. the clank and click of various resistance systems. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 16:13:00h | But at precisely 4.13 pm, the fifty thousand spectators saw the totally unexpected happen, before their very eyes.From the most crowded section of the southern grandstand, an appirition suddenly emerged..... | Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter | Mario Vargas Llosa | DennisPreston |
| 16:15:00h | Must have the phone disconnected. Some contractor keeps calling me up about payment for 50 bags of cement he claims I collected ten days ago. Says he helped me load them onto a truck himself. I did drive Whitby's pick-up into town but only to get some lead screening. What does he think I'd do with all that cement? Just the sort of irritating thing you don't expect to hang over your final exit. (Moral: don't try too hard to forget Eniwetok.) Woke 9:40. To sleep 4:15. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 16:15:00h | On the tenth day of October at quarter past four in the afternoon with a dry hot wind blowing through the passed Maria found herself in Baker. She had never meant to go as far as Baker, had started out that day as every day, her only destination the freeway. But she had driven out of San Bernadino and up the Barstow and instead of turning back at Barstow (she had been out that far before but never that late in the day, it was past time to navigate back, she was out too far too late, the rhythm was lost ) she kept driving. | Play it as it Lays | Joan Didion | KDMiller |
| 16:15:00h | The sun had begun to sink in the west, and the shadow of an oak branch had crept across my knees. My watch said it was 4.15. | The Wind-up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami | @5_to_9_Jo |
| 16:17:00h | Apparently the great Percy has no sense of humour, for at four-seventeen he got tired of it, and hit Skinner crisply in the right eyeball, blacking the same as per illustration. The subsequent fight raged gorily for five minutes odd, and then Wilson, who seems to be a professional pugilist in disguise, landed what my informant describes as three corkers on his opponent's proboscis. Skinner's reply was to sit down heavily on the floor, and give him to understand that the fight was over, and that for the next day or two his face would be closed for alterations and repairs. Wilson thereupon harangued the company in well-chosen terms, tried to get Skinner to shake hands, but failed, and finally took the entire crew out to the shop, where they made pigs of themselves at his expense. I have spoken.' | A Prefect's Uncle | P. G. Wodehouse | Cindeesan |
| 16:18:00h | 4.18 p.m. Put Toby into his cage | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 16:20:00h | 4.20 p.m. Watch television or a video | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 16:20:00h | At twenty minutes past four - or, to put it another, blunter way, an hour and twenty minutes past what seemed to be all reasonable hope - the unmarried bride, her head down, a parent stationed on either side of her, was helped out of the building... | Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters | J. D. Salinger | silentprinter |
| 16:23:00h | They were hurrying west, trying to reach the river before sunset. The warming-related 'adjustments' to Earth's orbit had shortened the winter days, so that now, in January, sunset was taking place at 4.23. | A visit from the goon squad | Jennifer Egan | AggieH |
| 16:25:00h | As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was putting in the horse. | The Man with the Twisted Lip | Arthur Conan-Doyle | |
| 16:30:00h | She hung up on me at first, then asked me whether I made a point of behaving like a 'small-time suburban punk' with women I had slept with. But after apologies, insults, laughter, and tears, Romeo and Juliet were to be seen together later that afternoon, mushily holding hands in the dark at a four-thirty screening of L ove and Death at the National Film Theatre. Happy endings – for now at least. | Essays in Love | Alain de Botton | @alanawhitman |
| 16:30:00h | "It is only a quarter past four, (shewing his watch) and you are not now in Bath. No theatre, no rooms to prepare for. Half an hour at Northanger must be enough." | Nothanger Abbey | Jane Austen | saintchanel |
| 16:30:00h | At half past four experiment | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 16:30:00h | At four-thirty that afternoon in late January when I stepped into the parlour with Boo, my dog, Hutch was in his favourite armchair, scowling at the television, which he had muted. | Odd Hours | Dean Koontz | |
| 16:30:00h | I leave the office at four thirty, head up to Xclusive where I work out on free weights for an hour, then taxi across the park to Gio's in the Pierre Room for a facial, a manicure and, if time permits, a pedicure. | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | Sal Paradise650 |
| 16:35:00h | The Voice shut itself off with a click, and then reopened conversation by announcing the arrival at Platform 9 of the 4.35 from Birmingham and Wolverhampton. | 4.50 from Paddington | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 16:45:00h | The next day Bill took only ten minutes of the twenty-minute break allotted for the afternoon and left at fifteen minutes before five. He parked the car in the lot just as Arlene hopped down from the bus. He waited until she entered the building, then ran up the stairs to catch her as she stepped out of the elevator. "Bill! God, you scared me. You're early," she said. He shrugged. "Nothing to do at work," he said. She let him use her key to open the door. He looked at the door across the hall before following her inside."Let's go to bed," he said."Now?" She laughed. "What's gotten into you?" "Nothing. Take your dress off." He grabbed for her awkwardly, and she said, "Good God, Bill," He unfastened his belt. Later they sent out for Chinese food, and when it arrived they ate hungrily, without speaking, and listened to records. | Where I'm Calling From | Raymond Carver | Cindeesan |
| 16:50:00h | They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle. | The 13 Clocks | James Thurber | drewtrain |
| 16:50:00h | When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always, she heard the tires on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and went forward to kiss him as he came in. | “Lamb to the Slaughter” | Roald Dahl | alimison |
| 16:54:00h | It was 1654 local time when the Red October broke the surface of the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, forty-seven miles southeast of Norfolk. There was no other ship in sight. | The Hunt for Red October | Tom Clancy | Cindeesan |
| 16.00:00h | Miss Douce took Boylan's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me. —What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four? O'clock. Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged Blazes Boylan's elbowsleeve. —Let's hear the time, he said. | Ulysses | James Joyce | terribleman |
| 16.05:00h | IT was exactly five minutes past four as Mr. Robert Audley stepped out upon the platform at Shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute of a grateful public. Robert Audley waited with consummate patience for a considerable time; but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great many passengers from Norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister's seraphic indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way. | Lady Audley's Secret | Mary Elizabeth Braddon | frustrated artist |
| 16.15:00h | "I remember the dread with which I at quarter past four Let go with a bang behind me our house front door" | False Security | John Betjeman | thefatcontroller |
| 16.50:00h | "The train standing at Platform 3," the Voice told her, "is the 4.50 for Brackhampton, Milchester, Waverton, Carvil Junction, Roxeter and stations to Chadmouth. Passengers for Brackhampton and Milchester travel at the rear of the train. Passengers for Vanequay change at Roxeter." The voice shut itself off with a click, | 4.50 from Paddington | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 17:00:00h | The rain stopped around 5 p.m. and a few of those people who were out and about expressed mild surprise when the rainbow failed to fade. | Mortality -- 'The Rainbow' | Nicholas Royle | scrapwings |
| 17:00:00h | A las cinco de la tarde. Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde. Un niño trajo la blanca sábana a las cinco de la tarde. Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida a Federico las cinco de la tarde. Lo demás era muerte y sólo muerte a las cinco de la tarde. | LLANTO PER IGNACIO SANCHEZ MEJIAS:LA COGIDA Y LA MUERTE | García Lorca (1898 - 1936) | Bronte |
| 17:00:00h | About five, the Abbot, a young Manchester terrier, began chirruping. He stood on the body of his owner, Flora, with his forepaws on the sill of the balcony, stared through the green rattan blinds, and trembled. He could see the farmer in the field, and Edward asleep on the next balcony. | The People With the Dogs | Christina Stead | frollostone |
| 17:00:00h | The rest was death and death alone at five in the afternoon. [Lo demas era muerte y solo muerte a las cinco de la tarde] | Poem Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias | Federicio Lorca | Dumspirospero |
| 17:00:00h | At five o'clock that afternoon, while Barbara waited in a taxi, Harold went into the convent in Auteuil and explained to the nun who sat in the concierge's glass cage that Mme. Straus-Muguet was expecting them. He assumed that men were not permitted any further, and that they would all three go out for tea. | The Chateau | William Maxwell | KeturahB |
| 17:00:00h | Four o,clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement,revision, reading from four to five. Short snooze ...from five to six. Affair of agent and | The Woman in White - The Story Continued | Wilkie Collins | |
| 17:00:00h | 5.00 p.m. Read a book | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 17:00:00h | ERE THE HALF-HOUR ended, five o'clock struck; school was dismissed, and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend; it was deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | JLM |
| 17:00:00h | At five o’clock adieux were waved, and the ponderous liner edged away from the long pier, slowly turned its nose seaward, discarded its tug, and headed for the widening water spaces that led to old world wonders. By night the outer harbour was cleared, and late passengers watched the stars twinkling above an unpolluted ocean. | The Horror at Red Hook | H. P. Lovecraft | gb steve |
| 17:00:00h | He found it harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon and when he left the building at five o'clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | JK Rowling | kbergen |
| 17:00:00h | It was nearly five in the evening when the cook came aboard. He did not have the cabbages | A Single Pebble | John Hershey | Proto Plasm |
| 17:00:00h | Until five o' clock there was no sign of life from the room. Then he rang for his servant and ordered a cold bath. | Embers | Sandor Marai | Proto Plasm |
| 17:00:00h | But I took the mixture at five o'clock in the afternoon. I run my tongue over my dry mouth. I feel dizzy. I know this dizziness: it's because I haven't had a cigarette for hours. | The End of Mr Y | Scarlett Thomas | Elsje Heuff |
| 17:00:00h | We motored, I remember, leaving London in the morning in a heavy shower of rain, coming to Manderley about five o'clock, in time for tea. I can see myself now, unsuitably dressed as usual, although a bride of seven weeks, in a tan-coloured stockinette frock, a small fur known as a stone marten round my neck, and over all a shapeless mackintosh, far too big for me and dragging to my ankles. | Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | @alanawhitman |
| 17:00:00h | The English clock strikes 17 English strokes. MRS. SMITH: There, it's nine o'clock. | The Bald Soprano (La cantatrice chauve) | Eugène Ionesco | lluviadelanoche |
| 17:00:00h | She had not seen her yet, as Osmond had given her to understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five o'clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious person. Isabel had been at this institution before; she had come with Pansy to see the sisters. | The Portrait of a Lady | Henry James | Richard Roberts |
| 17:00:00h | Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not--some people of course never do--the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. | The Portrait of a Lady | Henry James | Hope D |
| 17:05:00h | He went up to his coachman, who was dozing on the box in the shadow, already lengthening, of a thick lime-tree; he admired the shifting clouds of midges circling over the hot horses, and, waking the coachman, he jumped into the carriage, and told him to drive to Bryansky’s. It was only after driving nearly five miles that he had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch, and realise that it was half-past five, and he was late. | Anna Karenina | L Tolstoy | saintchanel |
| 17:10:00h | Hours later, at ten minutes past five, Saturday afternoon, Nora and Travis and Jim Keene crowded in front of the mattress on which Einstein lay. The dog had just taken a few more ounces of water. He looked at them with interest, too. Travis tried to decide if those large brown eyes still had the strange depth, uncanny alertness, and undoglike awareness that he had seen in them so many times before. Damn. He was not sure—and his uncertainty scared him. Jim examined Einstein, noting aloud that his eyes were clearer, almost normal, and that his temperature was still falling. “Heart’s sounding a little better, too.” Worn out by the ten-minute examination, Einstein flopped onto his side and issued a long weary sigh. In a moment, he dozed again. | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 17:15:00h | When August Bach emerged from the gloomy chill of the air-conditioned Divisional Fighter Control bunker it was 17:15 hrs CET. The day had ripened into one of those mellow summer afternoons when the air is warm and sweet like soft toffee and anyone with an ounce of sense is reclining in the grass smelling the honeysuckle and wild strawberries, half listening to the insects, and watching blues and brimstones fluttering fast enough to avoid the swallows above them that glide and wheel and wait and wait. | Bomber | Len Deighton | Mr Thing |
| 17:20:00h | The Meeting was listed as starting at, and it was only around 1720, and Hal thought the voices might signify some sort of pre-Meeting orientation for people who've come for the first time, sort of tentatively, just to scout the whole enterprise out, so he doesn't knock. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 17:23:00h | "I was wondering if we could meet for a drink." "What for?" "Just for a chat. Do you know the Royal batsman, near Central Station? We could meet tomorrow at five?" "Five twenty-three," I said, to exert some control over the situation. | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | AggieH |
| 17:25:00h | It was five-twenty-five when I pulled up in front of the library. Still early for our date, so I got out of the car and took a stroll down the misty streets. In a coffee shop, watched a golf match on television, then I went to an entertainment center and played a video game. The object of the game was to wipe out tanks invading from across the river. I was winning at first, but as the game went on, the enemy tanks bred like lemmings, crushing me by sheer number and destroying my base. An on-screen nuclear blast took care of everything, followed by the message game over insert coin. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 17:30:00h | THE COUNTESS OLENSKA had said “after five”; and at half after the hour Newland Archer rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with a giant wisteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired, far down West Twenty-third Street, from the vagabond Medora. | The Age of Innocence | Edith Wharton | werblina |
| 17:30:00h | It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and in excellent spirits, a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression. | The Sign Of Four | Arthur Conan Doyle | CMS |
| 17:40:00h | It's five-forty now. The party's at six. By about ten past, the eleventh floor should be clearing. Arnold is a very popular partner; no one's going to miss his farewell speech if they can help it. Plus, at Carter Spink parties, the speeches always happen early on, so people can get back to work if they need to. And while everyone's listening I'll slip down to Arnold's office. It should work. It has to work. As I stare at my own bizarre reflection, I feel a grim resolve hardening inside me. He's not going to get away with everyone thinking he's a cheery, harmless old teddy bear. He's not going to get away with it. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | Cindeesan |
| 17:45:00h | Janice is not waiting for him in the lounge or beside the pool when at last around 5.45 they come home from playing the par-5 eighteenth. Instead one of the girls in their green and white uniforms comes over and tells him that his wife wants him to call home. | Rabbit Is Rich | John Updike | translated |
| 17:48:00h | Father came home at 5:48 p.m. I heard him come through the front door. Then he came into the living room. He was wearing a lime green and sky blue check shirt and there was a double knot on one of his shoes but not on the other. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 17:50:00h | "What time is it Jack?" "Ten to six" "Ten more minutes then." I shuffle the cards. "Time for a quick game of rummy?" [Callum and Jack in Noughts and Crosses before Callum's hanging] | Noughts and Crosses | Malorie Blackman | RachelG |
| 17:54:00h | It was 5:54 pm when Father came back into the living room. He said, 'What is this?" but he said it very quietly and I didn't realise that he was angry because he wasn't shouting. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 17:55:00h | "five minutes to six" | The Deferred Appointment | Algernon Blackwood | |
| 17:55:00h | The wind moaned and sang dismally, catching the ears and lifting the shabby coat-tails of Mr Mortimer Jenkyn, 'Photographic Artist', as he stood outside and put the shutters up with this own cold hands in despair of further trade. It was five minutes to six. | The Deferred Appointment | Algernon Blackwood | |
| 18:00:00h | "When he arrived it was nearly six o'clock, and the sun was setting full and warm, and the red light streamed in through the window and gave more colour to the pale cheeks." | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Violet_apple |
| 18:00:00h | Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. | Le Club des Hachichins | Théophile Gautier | quarthadast |
| 18:00:00h | Leon waited all day for six o'clock to arrive; when he got to the inn, he found no one there but Monsieur Binet, already at the table. | Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert | BelfastKoala |
| 18:00:00h | Four o,clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement,revision, reading from four to five. Short snooze ...from five to six. Affair of agent and sealed letter from seven to eight. At eight, en route. | The Woman in White - The Story Continued | Wilkie Collins | |
| 18:00:00h | Oh oh oh. Six o'clock and the master not home yet | The skin of our teeth | Thornton Wilder | |
| 18:00:00h | By Six, the Flood had done— No Tumult there had been | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 18:00:00h | 6.00 p.m. Have tea | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 18:00:00h | The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. | Preludes | T S Eliot | dougiedownunder |
| 18:00:00h | 'On Tuesday? he said. - It's Thursday evening. So that's, what, two days ago, basically. Why am I only being told now? - They must have thought you weren't interested. That might well be, but in that case they were wrong. Why shouldn't he be interested in knowing when his father died? He had certainly never said he wasn't. It was his father for fuck's sake; you ought to know, when your father is dead! - On Tuesday, he said again. - At six. (My translation) | Med Venlig Deltagelse (Condolences) | Erling Jepsen | AJ Jansson |
| 18:00:00h | King Richard: What is o'clock? Catesby: It is six o'clock, full supper time. King Richard: I will not sup tonight. Give me some ink and paper. | Richard III | William Shakespeare | Irv |
| 18:00:00h | When the bells of Calvary Church struck six, she saw Mr and Mrs Biggs hurrying down the front stoop, rushing off to the shops before they closed. | The Interpretation Of Murder | Jed Rubenfeld | crumbs |
| 18:00:00h | The newspaper snaked through the door and there was suddenly a six o'clock feeling in the house | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Muriel Spark | Ayearofreadingwomen |
| 18:00:00h | Did you go down to the farm while I was away?' 'No,' I said 'but I saw Ted.' 'Did he have a message for me ?' she asked. 'He said today was no good as he was going to Norwich. But Friday at six o'clock, same as usual.' 'Are you sure he said six o'clock?' she asked, puzzled. 'Quite sure.' | The Go-Between | L.P. Hartley | Richard Roberts |
| 18:04:00h | He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as the last note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation: "Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak to me, Rosannah, dearest! The cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!" There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound came, framing itself into language: "Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!" "They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have the proof, ample and abundant proof!" "Oh; Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that you are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!" "We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the years of our life." "We will, we will, Alonzo!" "Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth--" | The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rossanah Ethelton | Mark Twain | Cindeesan |
| 18:06:00h | Above it all rose the Houses of Parliament, with the hands of the clock stopped at three minutes past six. It was difficult to believe that all that meant nothing any more, that now it was just a pretentious confection that could decay in peace. | The Day of the Triffids | John Wyndham | |
| 18:10:00h | 'Let me see now. You had a drink at the Continental at six ten.' 'Yes.' 'And at six forty-five you were talking to another journalist at the door of the Majestic?' 'Yes, Wilkins. I told you all this, Vigot, before. That night.' | The Quiet American | Graham Greene | Oskar101 |
| 18:15:00h | "At a quarter past six he was through with them." | The Photograph | Penelope Lively | cris.cain |
| 18:15:00h | 'Quarter past six,' said Tony. 'He's bound to have told her by now.' | A Handful of Dust | Evelyn Waugh | G22 |
| 18:15:00h | "I checked the time on the corner of my screen. 6.15. pm I was never going to finish my essay in forty-five minutes | Girl Missing | Sophie McKenzie | ella |
| 18:25:00h | At twenty-five past six I go into the bathroom and have a wash, then while the Old Lady's busy in the kitchen helping Chris with the washing up I get my coat and nip out down the stairs. | A Kind of Loving | Stan Barstow | DennisPreston |
| 18:30:00h | It is six thirty. Now the dark night and the deafening racket of the crickets again engulf the garden and the veranda, all around the house | Jealousy | Alain Robbe-Grillet | DickonBroom |
| 18:30:00h | AT five o'clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at half past six Elizabeth was summoned to dinner. | Pride & Prejudice, ch. 8 | Jane Austen | Bronte |
| 18:30:00h | "At six-thirty I left the bar and walked outside. It was getting dark and the big Avenida looked cool and graceful. On the other side were homes that once looked out on the beach. Now they looked out on hotels and most of them had retreated behind tall hedges and walls that cut them off from the street." | The Rum Diary | Hunter S. Thompson | |
| 18:30:00h | 6.30 p.m. Watch television or a video | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 18:30:00h | The Saloon, like every other room in Arnside House, was large and lofty, and had been furnished, possibly some twenty years earlier, in what had then been the first style of elegance. This, however, had become outmoded, and although the room bore no such signs of penury as a ragged carpet or patched curtains, the bright brocades had faded, the paint on the panelled walls had cracked, and the gilded picture-frames had long since become tarnished. To a casual visitor it might have seemed that Mr Penicuik, who owned the house, had fallen upon evil days; but two of the three gentlemen assembled in the Saloon at half-past six on a wintry evening of late February were in no danger of falling into this error. They knew that Great-uncle Matthew, who had made a fortune in the large enterprise of draining the Fen-country, was one of the warmest men in England, and suffered merely from a rooted dislike of spending money on anything that did not administer directly to his own comfort. | Cotillion | Georgette Heyer | alimison |
| 18:30:00h | As I was turning away, grieved to be parting from him, a thought started up in me and I turned back. 'Shall I take one more message for you?' 'That's good of you' he said, 'but do you want to?' 'Yes, just this once.' It could do no harm, I thought; and I should be far away when the message takes effect, and I wanted to say something to show we were friends. 'Well,' he said, once more across the gap, 'say tomorrow's no good, I'm going to Norwich, but Friday at half-past six, same as usual.' | The Go-Between | L.P. Hartley | Richard Roberts |
| 18:30:00h | It is around half past six in the evening. Dusk is gathering in the living room, an early dusk due to the fog which has rolled in from the Sound and is like a white curtain drawn down outside the windows. | Long Day's Journey Into Night | Eugene O'Neill | SalParadise650 |
| 18:35:00h | And then it was 6.35 pm and I heard Father come home in his van and I moved the bed up against the door so he couldn't get in and he came into the house and he and Mother shouted at each other. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 18:36:00h | Kaldren pursues me like luminescent shadow. He has chalked up on the gateway '96,688,365,498,702'. Should confuse the mail man. Woke 9:05. To sleep 6:36. | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 18:40:00h | Having to change 'buses, I allowed plenty of time — in fact, too much; for we arrived at twenty minutes to seven, and Franching, so the servant said, had only just gone up to dress. However, he was down as the clock struck seven; he must have dressed very quickly. | Diary of a Nobody | George & Weedon Grossmith | JLM |
| 18:40:00h | Amy: What's that? I thought I saw someone pass the window. What time is it? Charles: Nearly twenty to seven. | The Family Reunion | TS Eliot | thefatcontroller |
| 18:45:00h | "Six forty-five," called Louie. "Did you hear, Ming," he asked, "did you hear?" "Yes, Taddy, I heard." "What is it?' asked Tommy. "The new baby, listen, the new baby." | The Man Who Loved Children | Christina Stead | frollostone |
| 18:45:00h | 'Let me see now. You had a drink at the Continental at six ten.' 'Yes.' 'And at six forty-five you were talking to another journalist at the door of the Majestic?' 'Yes, Wilkins. I told you all this, Vigot, before. That night.' | The Quiet American | Graham Greene | Oskar101 |
| 18:45:00h | It was a quarter to seven when I letr myself into the office and clicked the light on and picked a piece of paper off the floor. It was a notice from the Green Feather Messenger Service ... | The High Window | Raymond Chandler | jrsd |
| 18:50:00h | It was time to go see the Lady. When we arrived at her house at ten minutes before seven o'clock, Damaronde answered the door. | Boy's Life | Robert R. McCammon | Ruthenium |
| 18:50:00h | At ten minutes to seven Dulcie was ready. She looked at herself in the wrinkly mirror. The reflection was satisfactory. The dark blue dress, fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the but-slightly-soiled gloves--all representing self- denial, even of food itself--were vastly becoming. Dulcie forgot everything else for a moment except that she was beautiful, and that life was about to lift a corner of its mysterious veil for her to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her out before. Now she was going for a brief moment into the glitter and exalted show. | The Four Million | O. Henry | Cindeesan |
| 18:55:00h | '... You had no reason to think the times important. Indeed how suspicious it would be if you had been completely accurate.' 'Haven't I been?' 'Not quite. It was five to seven that you talked to Wilkins.' 'Another ten minutes.' 'Of course. As I said. And it had only just struck six when you arrived at the Continental.' | The Quiet American | Graham Greene | Oskar101 |
| 18:55:00h | The day of the play arrived ("opening night" we called it, though there would be no others. In an improvised "dressing room" behind the stage we actors sat on folding chairs. The rest of the eight graders were already onstage, standing in a big semicircle. The play was set to begin at seven o'clock and finish before sunset. It was 6:55. Beyond the flats we could hear the hockey field filling up. the low rumble got steadily louder - voices, footsteps, the creaking of bleachers, the slamming of car doors in the parking lot. We were each dressed in a floor-length robe, tie-dyed black, gray, and white. The Obscure Object, however, was wearing a white robe. Mr. da Silva's concept was minimal: no maekup, no masks. | Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | Sal Paradise650 |
| 18:57:00h | Folded in this triple melody, the audience sat gazing; and beheld gently and approvingly without interrogation, for it seemed inevitable, a box tree in a green tub take the place of the ladies’ dressing-room; while on what seemed to be a wall, was hung a great clock face; the hands pointing to three minutes to the hour; which was seven.' | Between the Acts | Virginia Woolf | S.Synecdoche |
| 18:58:00h | "We opened the door easy, and then stampeded for the front. Part of the gang was lined up at the bar; part of 'em was passing over the drinks, and two or three was peeping out the door and window and taking shots at the marshal's crowd. The room was so full of smoke we got half-way to the front door before they noticed us. Then I heard Berry Trimble's voice somewhere yell out: "'How'd that Buck Caperton get in here?' and he skinned the side of my neck with a bullet. I reckon he felt bad over that miss, for Berry's the best shot south of the Southern Pacific Railroad. But the smoke in the saloon was some too thick for good shooting. "Me and Perry smashed over two of the gang with our table legs, which didn't miss like the guns did, and as we run out the door I grabbed a Winchester from a fellow who was watching the outside, and I turned and regulated the account of Mr. Berry. "Me and Perry got out and around the corner all right. I never much expected to get out, but I wasn't going to be intimidated by that married man. According to Perry's idea, checkers was the event of the day, but if I am any judge of gentle recreations that little table-leg parade through the Gray Mule saloon deserved the head-lines in the bill of particulars. "'Walk fast,' says Perry, 'it's two minutes to seven, and I got to be home by—' "'Oh, shut up,' says I. 'I had an appointment as chief performer at an inquest at seven, and I'm not kicking about not keeping it.' | Roads of Destiny | O. Henry | Cindeesan |
| 18.33:00h | Every evening, Michel took the train home, changed at Esbly and usually arrived in Crécy on the 6.33pm train where Annabelle would be waiting at the station | Atomised | Michel Houellebecq | terribleman |
| 19:00:00h | Twas about seven o'clock at night, And the wind it blew with all its might, And the rain came pouring down, And the dark clouds seem'd to frown, | The Tay Bridge Disaster | William McGonagall | silentprinter |
| 19:00:00h | By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived--no thin five-piece affair but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors and hair shorn in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Sarah Churchwell |
| 19:00:00h | t was seven o'clock when we got into the coupé with him and started for Long Island. [...] So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight. | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | Sarah Churchwell |
| 19:00:00h | 7.00 p.m. Do maths practice | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 19:00:00h | And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M. Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which constituted, all by itself, the tapering 'elevation' of an irregular pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom, with the little passage through whose glazed door Mamma would enter; in a word, seen always at the same evening hour, isolated from all its possible surroundings, detached and solitary against its shadowy background, the bare minimum of scenery necessary (like the setting one sees printed at the head of an old play, for its performance in the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at night. I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. | In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way | Marcel Proust | terribleman |
| 19:00:00h | About seven o’clock in the evening she had died, and her frantic husband had made a frightful scene in his efforts to kill West, whom he wildly blamed for not saving her life. Friends had held him when he drew a stiletto, but West departed amidst his inhuman shrieks, curses, and oaths of vengeance. | Herbert West - Reanimator | H. P. Lovecraft | gb steve |
| 19:00:00h | Edward had been allowed to see me only from seven till nine-thirty pm, always inside the confines of my home and under the supervision of my dad's unfailingly crabby glare. | New Moon | Stephenie Meyer | nightwriter |
| 19:00:00h | It was seven o'clock and by this time she was not very far from Raveloe, but she was not familiar enough with those monotonous lanes to know how near she was to her journey's end. She needed comfort, and she knew but one comforter - the familiar demon in her bosom; but she hesitated a moment, after drawing out the black remnant, before she raised it to her lips. | Silas Marner | George Eliot | cm1984 |
| 19:00:00h | "The town clock struck seven. The echoes of the great chime wandered in the unlit halls of the library. An autumn leaf, very crisp, fell somewhere in the dark. But it was only the page of a book, turning." | Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury | Laura Treacy Bentley |
| 19:10:00h | The party was to begin at seven. The invitations gave the hour as six-thirty because the famly knew everyone would come a little late, so as not to be the first to arrive. At seven-ten not a soul had come; somewhat acrimoniously, the family discussed the advantages and disadvantages of tardiness: Elvira, who prided herself on her punctuality, declared it was an unforgiveable discourtesy to leave people waiting; Julia, repeating the words of her late husband, replied that visitors who arrived late showed their consideration, since if everyone arrives a little late it's more comfortable all around, and no one has to feel rushed. By seven-fifteen not another soul could squeeze into the house. | The elderly lady | Jorge Luis Borges (transl. Andrew Hurley) | nilpferd |
| 19:10:00h | He had already got to the point where, by rocking more strongly, he maintained his equilibrium with difficulty, and very soon he would finally have to make a final decision, for in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven. Then there was a ring at the door of the apartment. “That’s someone from the office,” he told himself, and he almost froze, while his small limbs only danced around all the faster. For one moment everything remained still. “They aren’t opening,” Gregor said to himself, caught up in some absurd hope. | Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka | DeanCarroll |
| 19:10:00h | But every morning, even if there's been a nighttime session and he has only slept two hours, he gets up at six and reads his paper while he drinks a strong cup of coffee. In this way Papa constructs himself every day. | The Elegance of the Hedgehog | Muriel Barbery | Parisa |
| 19:11:00h | Good, you said. Run, or you won't get a seat. See you soon. Your voice was reassuring. 19:11:00, the clock said. I put the phone back on its hook and I ran. The seat I got, almost the last one in the carriage, was opposite a girl who started coughing as soon as there weren't any other free seats I could move to. She looked pale and the cough rattled deep in her chest as she punched numbers into her mobile. Hi, she said (cough). I'm on the train. No, I've got a cold. A cold (cough). Yeah, really bad. Yeah, awful actually. Hello? (cough) Hello? | The Whole Story and Other Stories | Ali Smith | cindeesan |
| 19:15:00h | The party was to begin at seven. The invitations gave the hour as six-thirty because the famly knew everyone would come a little late, so as not to be the first to arrive. At seven-ten not a soul had come; somewhat acrimoniously, the family discussed the advantages and disadvantages of tardiness: Elvira, who prided herself on her punctuality, declared it was an unforgiveable discourtesy to leave people waiting; Julia, repeating the words of her late husband, replied that visitors who arrived late showed their consideration, since if everyone arrives a little late it's more comfortable all around, and no one has to feel rushed. By seven-fifteen not another soul could squeeze into the house. | The elderly lady | Jorge Luis Borges (transl. Andrew Hurley) | nilpferd |
| 19:15:00h | Cell count down to 400,000. Woke 8:10. To sleep 7:15. (Appear to have lost my watch without realising it, had to drive into town to buy another.) | The Voices of Time | JG Ballard | The Golux |
| 19:16:00h | “Sixteen past seven PM? That's when he came into the store or when he left after the fact?” | The Last Precinct | Patricia Cornwell | martinblank |
| 19:19:00h | … And it was me who spent about three hours this afternoon arguing one single contract. The term was best endeavors. The other side wanted to use reasonable efforts. In the end we won the point- but I can't feel my usual triumph. All I know is, it's seven-nineteen, and in eleven minutes I'm supposed to be halfway across town, sitting down to dinner at Maxim's with my mother and brother Daniel. I'll have to cancel. My own birthday dinner. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 19:20:00h | The clock read seven-twenty, but I felt no hunger. You'd think I might have wanted to eat something after the day I'd had, but I cringed at the very thought of food. I was short of sleep, my gut was slashed, and my apartment was gutted. There was no room for appetite. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 19:30:00h | At half past seven element | Emily Dickinson | ||
| 19:30:00h | "But now he was close - here was the house, here were the gates. Somewhere a clock beat a single chime. 'What, is it really half-past seven? That's impossible, it must be fast!'" | Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | TheSuperPope |
| 19:30:00h | The telephone call came at 7.30 on the evening of March 18th, a Saturday, the eve of the noisy, colourful festival that the town held in honour of Saint Joseph the carpenter - | A Simple Story | Leonardo Sciascia | Chris Real |
| 19:30:00h | The clock showed half-past seven. This was the twilight time. He would be there now. I pictured him in his old navy-blue sweater and peaked cap, walking soft-footed up the track towards the wood. He told me he wore the sweater because navy-blue barely showed up in the dark, black was even better, he said. The peaked cap was important too, he explained, because the peak casts a shadow over one's face. | Danny, the Champion of the World | Roald Dahl | alimison |
| 19:42:00h | I glance at my watch as we speed along the Strand. Seven forty-two. I'm starting to feel quite excited. The street outside is still bright and warm and tourists are walking along in T-shirts and shorts, pointing at the High Court. It must have been a gorgeous summer's day. Inside the air-conditioned Carter Spink building you have no idea what the weather in the real world is doing. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 19:45:00h | He taught me that if I had to meet someone for an appointment, I must refuse to follow the 'stupid human habit' of arbitrarily choosing a time based on fifteen-minute intervals. "Never meet people at 7:45 or 6:30, Jasper, but pick times like 7:12 and 8:03!" | A fraction of the whole | Steve Toltz | |
| 19:49:00h | There's a big, old-fashioned clock in the surgery. Just as Dr. Wellesley went out I heard the Moot Hall clock chime half-past seven, and then the chimes of St. Hathelswide's Church. I noticed that our clock was a couple of minutes slow, and I put it right." When did you next see Dr. Wellesley?" "At just eleven minutes to eight." "Where?" "In the surgery." "He came back there?" "Yes." "How do you fix that precise time--eleven minutes to eight?" "Because he'd arranged to see a patient in Meadow Gate at ten minutes to eight. I glanced at the clock as he came in, saw what time it was, and reminded him of the appointment." | In the Mayor's Parlour | J. S. Fletcher | Cindeesan |
| 19:50:00h | He waited until nearly eight, because around seven there were always more people coming in and out of the house than at other times. At ten to eight, he strolled downstairs, to make sure that Signora Buffi was not pottering around in the hall and that her door was not open, and to make sure there really was no one in Freddie's car, though he had gone down in the middle of the afternoon to look at the car and see if it was Freddie's. | The Talented Mr Ripley | Patricia Highsmith | LizzieC |
| 19:53:00h | Wednesday, 11 th December 1963. 7.53 p.m. 'Help me. You've got to help me.' The woman's voice quavered on the edge of tears. The duty constable who had picked up the phone heard a hiccuping gulp, as if the caller was struggling to speak. | A Place of Execution | Val McDermid | orlando |
| 19:56:00h | I remember the cigarette in his hard face, against the now limitless storm cloud. Bernardo cried to him unexpectedly: 'What time is it, Ireno?' Without consulting the sky, without stopping, he replied: 'It's four minutes to eight, young Bernardo Juan Franciso.' His voice was shrill, mocking. | Funes the Memorious-Labyrinths | Jorge Luis Borges | Odradek |
| 20:00:00h | The clock struck eight. Had it been ten, Elinor would have been convinced that at that moment she heard a carriage driving up to the house; and so strong was the persuasion that she did, in spite of the almost impossibility of their being already come, that she moved into the adjoining dressing-closet and opened a window-shutter, to be satisfied of the truth. She instantly saw that her ears had not deceived her. | Sense and Sensibility | Jane Austen | Benedicte |
| 20:00:00h | Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength and struck. | Eight O'Clock | A.E. Housman | Hackwriter |
| 20:00:00h | I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it. although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | BelfastKoala |
| 20:00:00h | Eight o'clock | Eight o'clock | A.E Housman | |
| 20:00:00h | She looked at her watch- it was eight o'clock | The Beautiful and Damned | F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
| 20:00:00h | 8.00 p.m. Have a bath | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 20:00:00h | That day he forgot to go to dinner ; he noticed the fact at eight in the evening , and as it was too late to go to the Rue St Jaques, he ate a lump of bread. | Les Miserables | Victor Hugo | kbergen |
| 20:00:00h | At eight o'clock that evening, a Saturday, Pamela Chamcha stood with Jumpy Joshi - who had refused to let her go unaccompanied - next to the Photo-Me machine in a corner of the main concourse of Euston station, feeling ridiculously conspiratorial. | Satanic Verses | Salman Rushdie | kbergen |
| 20:00:00h | Kuniang made her appearance in my study just before eight o' clock, arrayed in what had once ben a "party frock". | The Maker of Heavenly Trousers | Daniel Vare | Proto Plasm |
| 20:00:00h | Arthur thought he could even bear to listen to the album of bagpipe music he had won. It was eight o'clock and he decided he would make himself, force himself, to listen to the whole record before he phoned her. | So long, and thanks for all the fish | Douglas Adams | Gotmytowel |
| 20:00:00h | Freud had me knock on Jung's door, to no avail. They waited until eight, then set off for Brill's without him. | The Interpretation Of Murder | Jed Rubenfeld | crumbs |
| 20:00:00h | 'TIS eight o'clock,--a clear March night, The moon is up,--the sky is blue, The owlet, in the moonlight air, Shouts from nobody knows where; He lengthens out his lonely shout, Halloo! halloo! a long halloo! | "The Idiot Boy," from Complete Poetical Works | William Wordsworth | werblina |
| 20:00:00h | 'It is the twenty-third of June nineteen seventy-five, and it is eight o'clock in the evening. Seated at his jigsaw puzzle, Bartlebooth has just died. On the tablecloth, somewhere in the crepuscular sky of the four hundred and thirty-ninth puzzle, the black hole of the sole piece not yet filled in has the almost perfect shape of an X. But the ironical thing, which could have been foreseen long ago, is that the piece the dead man holds between his fingers is shaped like a W.'' | Life: A User's Manual | Georges Perec | adamlawrence86 |
| 20:00:00h | It's the twenty-third of June nineteen seventy-five, and it is eight o'clock in the evening, seated at his jigsaw puzzle, Bartlebooth has just died. | Life: A User's Manual | Georges Perec | sleekermissive |
| 20:00:00h | "I trace the words, I'll arrive to collect you for drinks at eight on Saturday." | Tell-All | Chuck Palahniuk | MichelledV |
| 20:00:00h | I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | alimison |
| 20:04:00h | The earth seems to cast its darkness upward into the air. The farm country is somber at night. He is grateful when the lights of Lankaster merge with his dim beams. He stops at a diner whose clock says 8.04. He hadn't intended to eat until he got out of the state. | Rabbit, Run | John Updike | translated |
| 20:05:00h | Ransom took out his watch, which he had adapted, on purpose, several hours before, to Boston time, and saw that the minutes had sped with increasing velocity during this interview, and that it now marked five minutes past eight. 'Miss Chancellor will have to square the public,' he said in a moment; and the words were far from being an empty profession of security, for the conviction already in possession of him, that a drama in which he, though cut off, was an actor, had been going on for some time in the apartment he was prevented from entering, that the situation was extraordinarily strained there, and that it could not come to an end without an appeal to him - this transcendental assumption acquired an infinitely greater force the instant he perceived that Verena was even now keeping her audience waiting. Why didn't she go on? Why, except that she knew he was there, and was gaining time?' | The Bostonians | Henry James | frankie01 |
| 20:07:00h | Bennie pulled the transcripts for that night. The first call had come in at 8:07, with a positive ID. | Mistaken Identity | ||
| 20:07:00h | And I could hear that there were fewer people in the little station when the train wasn't there, so I opened my eyes and I looked at my watch and it said 8:07 pm and I had been sitting on the bench for approximately 5 hours but it hadn't seemed like approximately 5 hours, except that my bottom hurt and I was hungry and thirsty. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 20:10:00h | At 2010h. on 1 April Y.D.A.U., the medical attache is still watching the unlabelled entertainment cartridge. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | Eddiemunro |
| 20:14:00h | In the basement switching room of the telephone company, Agents Rick Olbier and Denny Jones were tending the NSA’s electronic tapping and tracing equipment, monitoring Garrison Dilworth’s office and home lines. It was dull duty, and they played cards to make the time pass: two-hand pinochle and five-hundred rummy, neither of which was a good game, but the very idea of two-hand poker repelled them. When a call came through to Dilworth’s home number at fourteen minutes past eight o’clock, Olbier and Jones reacted with far more excitement than the situation warranted because they were desperate for action. Olbier dropped his cards on the floor, and Jones threw his on the table, and they reached for the two headsets as if this was World War II and they were expecting to overhear a top-secret conversation between Hitler and Goring. | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 20:15:00h | 8.15 p.m. Get changed into pyjamas | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 20:15:00h | Natsha: I was looking to see if there wasn't a fire. It's Shrovetide, and the servant is simply beside herself; I must look out that something doesn't happen. When I came through the dining-room yesterday midnight, there was a candle burning. I couldn't get her to tell me who had lighted it. [Puts down her candle] What's the time? Andrey: [Looks at his watch] A quarter past eight. Natasha: And Olga and Irina aren't in yet. The poor things are still at work. Olga at the teachers' council, Irina at the telegraph office...[sighs] I said to your sister this morning, "Irina, darling, you must take care of yourself." But she pays no attention. Did you say it was a quarter past eight? | The Three Sisters | Anton Chekhov | Masha |
| 20:15:00h | "Cannot locate operating instructions (for video)" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 20:20:00h | 8.20 p.m. Play computer games | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 20:20:00h | Lupin’s rooms looked very nice; but the dinner was, I thought, a little too grand, especially as he commenced with champagne straight off. I also think Lupin might have told us that he and Mr. and Mrs. Murray Posh and Miss Posh were going to put on full evening dress. Knowing that the dinner was only for us six, we never dreamed it would be a full dress affair. I had no appetite. It was quite twenty minutes past eight before we sat down to dinner. At six I could have eaten a hearty meal. I had a bit of bread-and-butter at that hour, feeling famished, and I expect that partly spoiled my appetite | Diary of a Nobody | George and Weedon Grossmith | JLM |
| 20:27:00h | At seven-and-twenty minutes past eight Mrs Lofthouse was seated at Aurora's piano, in the first agonies of a prelude in six flats; a prelude which demanded such extraordinary uses of the left hand across the right, and the right over the left, and such exercise of the thumbs in all positions, -in which, according to all orthodox theories of the pre-Thalberg-ite school no pianist's thumbs should ever be used,- that Mrs. mellish felt that her friend's attention was not very likely to wander far from the keys. | Aurora Floyd | Mary Elizabeth Braddon | frustrated artist |
| 20:29:30h | … she said, 'at exactly half-past eight you may be watching the middle upper window of the top floor. If I decide to forgive I will hang out of that window a white silk scarf. You will know by that that all is as was before, and you may come to me. If you see no scarf you may consider that everything between us is ended forever.' That," concluded the young man bitterly, "is why I have been watching that clock...” From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving, snowy, fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised joy. By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home-hurrying, unknowing of the delights of waving silken scarfs on the borders of dimly-lit parks. "Will you oblige me with the time, sir?" asked the young man; and the citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and announced: "Twenty-nine and a half minutes past eight, sir." And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made further oration. "By George! that clock's half an hour fast! First time in ten years I've known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies a--" But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer, a fast receding black shadow, flying in the direction of a house with three lighted upper windows. | The Four Million | O. Henry | Cindeesan |
| 20:30:00h | Alix took up a piece of needlework and began to stitch. Gerald read a few pages of his book. Then he glanced up at the clock and tossed the book away. "Half-past eight. Time to go down to the cellar and start work." | The Listerdale mystery | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 20:32:00h | At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard. "Wear it to-night, nephew," she begged. "Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved."Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he 'phoned for his cab. At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirty-two. "We mustn't keep mamma and the others waiting," said she. "To Wallack's Theatre as fast as you can drive!" said Richard loyally. They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white- starred lane that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills of morning. | The Four Million | O. Henry | Cindeesn |
| 20:35:00h | Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early the next morning | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Mt_Gilley |
| 20:35:00h | She paused reflectively. He was keenly interested now, not a doubt of it. The murderer is bound to have an interest in murder. She had gambled on that, and succeeded. She stole a glance at the clock. It was five and twenty to nine. | The Listerdale mystery | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 20:35:00h | "Found operating instructions under Hello" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 20:40:00h | "Who is it?" said the lady at the table. "Pip, ma'am." "Pip?" "Mr Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come - to play." "Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close." It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. "Look at me," said Miss Havisham, "You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?" I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer "No." | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | losingtheplot |
| 20:40:00h | "Point Remote Control" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 20:40:00h | The letter had been brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. … The village church clock chimed nine o'clock as I passed through the lodge gates. I turned to the left towards the village.… Ten minutes later I was at home once more. Caroline was full of curiosity to know why I had returned so early. I had to make up a slightly fictitious account of the evening in order to satisfy her, and I had an uneasy feeling that she saw through the transparent device. At ten o'clock I rose, yawned, and suggested bed. Caroline acquiesced. It was a Friday night, and on Friday nights I wind the clocks. I did it as usual, whilst Caroline satisfied herself that the servants had locked up the kitchen properly. It was a quarter past ten as we went up the stairs. I had just reached the top when the telephone rang in the hall below. … I ran down the stairs and took up the receiver. 'What?' I said. 'What? Certainly, I'll come at once.' … 'Parker telephoning,' I shouted to Caroline, 'from Fernly. They've just found Roger Ackroyd murdered.' | The Murder of Roger Ackroyd | Agatha Christie | LaGracia |
| 20:42:00h | "The hand at this moment pointed to 8.42. The players took up their cards, but their eyes were constantly on the clock. One may safely say that, however secure they might feel, never had minutes seemed so long to them." | Around the world in eighty days | Jules Verne | AggieH |
| 20:43:00h | '8.43,' said Thomas Flanagan, as he cut the cards placed before him by Gauthier Ralph. There was a moment's pause, during which the spacious room was perfectly silent. | Around the world in eighty days | Jules Verne | AggieH |
| 20:44:00h | The clock's pendulum beat every second with mathematical regularity, and each player could count every sixtieth of a minute as it struck his ear. '8.44!' said John Sullivan, in a voice that betrayed his emotion. Only one minute more and the wager would be won. | Around the world in eighty days | Jules Verne | AggieH |
| 20:45:00h | 'It's not impossible,' Phileas said quietly.'I bet you 20,000 pounds I could do it. If I leave this evening on the 8.45 train to Dover, I can be back here at the Reform Club by 8.45 on Saturday 21 December. I'll get my passport stamped at every place i stop to prove I've been around the world.' | Around the World in Eighty Days | Jules Verne | Charlotteyxx |
| 20:45:00h | Phileas Fogg, thus kidnapped, without having time to think, left his house, jumped into a cab, promised a hundred pounds to the cabman, and, having run over two dogs and overturned five carriages, reached the Reform Club. The clock indicated a quarter before nine when he appeared in the great saloon. | Eighty Days Around the World | Jules Verne | JLM |
| 20:45:00h | Beaver arrived at quarter to nine in a state of high self-approval; he had refused two invitations for dinner while dressing that evening; he had cashed a cheque for ten pounds at his club; he had booked a Divan table at Espinosa's. | A Handful of Dust | Evelyn Waugh | G22 |
| 20:50:00h | He was, yes, always home from work by 2050 on Thursdays. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 20:50:00h | all the clocks in London were striking ten minutes before nine. | Around the world in eighty days | Jules Verne | |
| 20:50:00h | "Ah Diagram "Buttons for IMC functions". But what are IMC functions?" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 20:50:00h | He glanced at the bracket-clock on the mantelpiece, but as this had stopped, drew out his watch. 'It is already too late,' he said. 'It wants only ten minutes to nine.' 'Good God!' she exclaimed, turning quite pale. 'What am I to do?' | The Reluctant Widow | Georgette Heyer | alimison |
| 20:53:00h | Only eight fifty-three. The partners' decision meeting starts in seven minutes. I'm not sure I can bear this. | The Undomestic Goddess | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 20:55:00h | "Decide to ignore that page" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 20:57:00h | "Wait," he said solemnly, "till the clock strikes. I have wealth and power and knowledge above most men, but when the clock strikes I am afraid. Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the word of the hereditary Prince of Valleluna. On the day of your marriage I will give you $100,000 and a palace on the Hudson. But there must be no clocks in that palace--they measure our follies and limit our pleasures. Do you agree to that?" "Of course," said the young man, cheerfully, "they're a nuisance, anyway--always ticking and striking and getting you late for dinner." He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three minutes to nine. | The Four Million | O. Henry | Cindeesan |
| 20:58:00h | "What time is it?" she asked, quiet, definite, hopeless. "Two minutes to nine," he replied, telling the truth with a struggle. | Sons and Lovers | D H Lawrence | saintchanel |
| 20.02:00h | `Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if he's not there, then go there and catch him.' Anna looked at the railway timetable in the newspapers. An evening train went at two minutes past eight. `Yes, I shall be in time.' She gave orders for the other horses to be put in the carriage, and packed in a traveling bag the things needed for a few days. She knew she would never come back here again. | Anna Karenina | Lev Tolstoy | frustrated artist |
| 20.20:00h | At 20.20 all ships had completed oiling. Hove to, they had had the utmost difficulty in keeping position in that great wind; but they were infinitely safer than in the open sea | H.M.S. Ulysses | Alistair MacLean | DennisPreston |
| 20.25:00h | She sat down in her usual seat and smiled at her husband as he sank into his own chair opposite her. She was saved. It was only five and twenty past eight. | The Listerdale mystery | Agatha Christie | stjerome1st |
| 20.30:00h | The bicycles go by in twos and threes - there's a dance on in Billy Brennan's barn tonight, and there's the half-talk code of mysteries and the wink-and-elbow language of delight. Half-past eight and there is not a spot upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown that might turn out a man or woman, | Inniskeen Road: July Evening | Patrick Kavanagh | Blaydon |
| 20.50:00h | What did it mean by beginning to tick so loudly all of a sudden? Its face indicated ten minutes to nine. Mrs Verloc cared nothing for time, and the ticking went on. | The Secret Agent | ||
| 21:00:00h | It was nine o'clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air | His Last Bow An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle | DoyleMj |
| 21:00:00h | At 2100 at night it's cold out. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 21:00:00h | That night at nine the President addressed the nation...... | All the President's Men | Bernstein & Woodward | |
| 21:00:00h | Early November. It's nine o'clock. The Great Tits are banging against the window. (my translation) | Out Stealing Horses | Per Petterson | AJ Jansson |
| 21:00:00h | Then he put on a grey jacket and left the flat to make his way to Praca da Alegria. It was already nine o'clock, Pereira maintains. | Pereira Maintains | Antonio Tabucchi | Raylr |
| 21:00:00h | 9.00 p.m. Watch television or a video | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 21:00:00h | Standing in the chrome-and-tile desolation of the Polar-Shtern Kafeteria at nine o'clock on a Friday night, in a snowstorm, he's the loneliest Jew in the Sitka District. | The Yiddish Policemen's Union | Michael Chabon | Nicholas Bryant |
| 21:00:00h | On the evening before K.'s thirty-first birthday - it was about nine o'clock, when there is a lull in the streets - two gentlemen came to his apartment. | The Trial | Franz Kafka | HannahFreeman |
| 21:00:00h | On the stroke of nine o’clock Mr. and Mrs. De Voted took their places on either side of the drawing-room fire, in attitudes of gracefully combined hospitality and unconcern, Vivian De Voted wearing a black beard and black velvet jacket buttoned over his Bohemian bosom, his lady in a flowing purple gown embroidered in divers appropriate places with pomegranates and their leaves. | A Marriage of Passion | Katherine Mansfield | alimison |
| 21:00:00h | Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held. All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to come, were all there at the appointed time. | War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | alimison |
| 21:00:00h | Billy Weaver had travelled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Swindon on the way, and by the time he got to Bath it was about nine o’clock in the evening and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks. | “The Landlady” | Roald Dahl | alimison |
| 21:00:00h | This time, the putting on of her best hat at nine o'clock at night with the idea of sallying forth from the castle, down the long drive and then northwards along the acacia avenue, had been enough to send her to her own doorway as though she suspected someone might be there, someone who was listening to her thoughts. | Titus Groan | Mervyn Peake | AdrianBalston |
| 21:00:00h | This time, the putting on of her best hat at nine o'clock at night with the idea of sallying forth from the castle, down the long drive and then northwards along the acacia avenue, had been enough to send her to her own doorway as though she suspected someone might be there, someone who was listening to her thoughts. | Titus Groan | Mervyn Peake | AdrianBalston |
| 21:10:00h | " When you turn your recorder on you must adjust clock and the calendar.......Press red and nothing happens. Press numbers and nothing happens. Wish stupid video had never been invented" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 21:15:00h | I stride to the edge of the pavement and stick out my hand. During the next three minutes, not a single car passes by. Not just no taxis. No vehicles at all. “Kind of quiet,” observes Jack at last. “Well, this is really kind of a residential area. Antonio's is a bit of a one-off.” Outwardly, I'm still quite calm. But inside I'm starting to panic. What are we going to do? Should we try to walk to Clapham High Street? But it's bloody miles away. I glance at my watch and am shocked to see that it's nine-fifteen. We've spent over an hour faffing about and we haven't even had a drink. And it's all my fault. I can't even organize one simple evening without its going catastrophically wrong. | Can You Keep a Secret? | Sophie Kinsella | cindeesan |
| 21:20:00h | 9.20 p.m. Have juice and a snack | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 21:25:00h | "Aargh. Suddenly main menu is on TV saying Press 6. Realize was using telly remote control by mistake. Now News has come on" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 21:28:00h | From that moment on--9:28 in the evening, June 18, 1941--everything was different. | Everything is Illuminated | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 21:30:00h | 9.30 p.m. Go to bed | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 21:30:00h | Forty-eight years old, profoundly asleep at nine thirty on a Friday night - this is modern professional life. | Saturday | Ian Mc Ewan | teomat |
| 21:30:00h | It's 9:30 p.m. already. I've gotta head uptown for my appointment with Pavel. Pavel is my shrink. He sees patients at night. He's a Czech Jew, a survivor of Terezin and Auswitz. I see him once a week. | Maus | Art Spiegelman | Elsje Heuff |
| 21:30:00h | Forty-eight years old, profoundly asleep at nine thirty on a Friday night – this is modern professional life. | Saturday | Ian McEwan | @5_to_9_Jo |
| 21:35:00h | The Sergeant jotted it down on a piece of paper. 'That checks up with his own story: 9.35 p.m. Budd leaves; the North dame arrives.' | A Blunt Instrument | Georgette Heyer | @nostalgia4books |
| 21:36:00h | My backpack was already packed, and I'd already gotten the other supplies together, like the altimeter and the granola bars and the Swiss army knife I'd dug up in Central Park, so there was nothing else to do. Mom tucked me in at 9:36. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 21:45:00h | But for some unfathomable reason-birth, death, the end of the universe and all things available to man-Cody Menhoff's was closed at 9:45 PM on a Thursday... | Riven Rock | T. C. Boyle | Cindeesan |
| 21:50:00h | I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical name. | Dubliners -- 'Araby' | James Joyce | scrapwings |
| 21:57:00h | "It sounds pretty interesting," said the policeman. "Rather a long time between meets, though, it seems to me. Haven't you heard from your friend since you left?" "Well, yes, for a time we corresponded," said the other. "But after a year or two we lost track of each other. You see, the West is a pretty big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But I know Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for he always was the truest, stanchest old chap in the world. He'll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door to-night, and it's worth it if my old partner turns up." The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with small diamonds. "Three minutes to ten," he announced. "It was exactly ten o'clock when we parted here at the restaurant door." | The Four Million | O. Henry | Cindeesan |
| 21.05:00 | Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here. Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling: "Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?" The house was silent. The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random." Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favorite…. "There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone." The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played. At ten o'clock the house began to die. | And there Will Come Soft Rains (from The Martia Chronicles) | Ray Bradbury | frustrated artist |
| 21.30:00h | The light in Mr. Green's kitchen snapped off at nine-thirty, followed by the light in his bedroom at his usual ten o'clock. His house was the first on the street to go dark. | A crime in the neighborhood | Suzanne Berne | |
| 22:00:00h | No one wanted to go to bed when at ten o'clock Mrs. March put by the last finished job, and said, "Come girls." Beth went to the piano and played the father's favorite hymn. All began bravely, but broke down one by one till Beth was left alone, singing with all her heart, for to her music was always a sweet consoler. "Go to bed and don't talk, for we must be up early and shall need all the sleep we can get. Good night, my darlings," said Mrs. March, as the hymn ended, for no one cared to try another. They kissed her quietly, and went to bed as silently as if the dear invalid lay in the next room. Beth and Amy soon fell asleep in spite of the great trouble, but Meg lay awake, thinking the most serious thoughts she had ever known in her short life. Jo lay motionless, and her sister fancied that she was asleep, till a stifled sob made her exclaim, as she touched a wet cheek... "Jo, dear, what is it? Are you crying about father?" "No, not now." "What then?" "My... My hair!" burst out poor Jo, trying vainly to smother her emotion in the pillow. It did not seem at all comical to Meg, who kissed and caressed the afflicted heroine in the tenderest manner. "I'm not sorry," protested Jo, with a choke. "I'd do it again tomorrow, if I could. It's only the vain part of me that goes and cries in this silly way. Don't tell anyone, it's all over now. I thought you were asleep, so I just made a little private moan for my one beauty. How came you to be awake?" | Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | Caitlin |
| 22:00:00h | 'The first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle Toby up stairs, which was about 10 - Mrs. Wadman threw herself into her arm chair, and crossing her left knee with her right, which formed a resting-place for her elbow, she reclin'd her cheek upon the palm of her hand, and leaning forwards, ruminated until midnight upon both sides of the question.' | The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | Laurence Sterne | AggieH |
| 22:00:00h | Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of the knee, and she stood up. 'Ten o'clock,' she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. 'Time for this good girl to go to bed.' | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | BelfastKoala |
| 22:00:00h | I could not doubt that this was the BLACK SPOT; and taking it up, I found written on the other side, in a very good, clear hand, this short message: "You have till ten tonight." [Location 288] | Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson | Peter Gill |
| 22:00:00h | The light in Mr. Green's kitchen snapped off at nine-thirty, followed by the light in his bedroom at his usual ten o'clock. His house was the first on the street to go dark. | A crime in the neighborhood | Suzanne Berne | |
| 22:00:00h | The grandfather clock in the State Room strikes ten times. | The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet | David Mitchell | yenal |
| 22:00:00h | They were alone then, and theoretically free to do whatever they wanted, but they went on eating the dinner they had no appetite for. Florence set down her knife and reached for Edward's hand and squeezed. From downstairs they heard the wireless, the chimes of Big Ben at the start of the ten o'clock news. | On Chesil Beach | Ian McEwan | jo_eyre |
| 22:00:00h | I went back into the library, limp and exhausted. In a few minutes the telephone began ringing again. I did not do anything. I let it ring. I went and sat down at Maxim's feet. It went on ringing. I did not move. Presently it stopped, as though cut suddenly in exasperation. The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o'clock. Maxim put his arms round me and lifted me against him. We began to kiss one another, feverishly, desperately, like guilty lovers who have not kissed before. | Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | @alanawhitman |
| 22:00:00h | By ten, Quoyle was drunk. The crowd was enormous, crushed together so densely that Nutbeem could not force his way down the hall or to the door and urinated on the remaining potato chips in the blue barrel, setting a popular example. | The Shipping News | E. Annie Proulx | Elsje Heuff |
| 22:00:00h | We let our upstairs room to a certain Mr. Goudsmit, a divorced man in his thirties, who appeared to have nothing to do on this particular evening; we simply could not get rid of him without being rude; he hung about until ten o'clock. | Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl | Anne Frank | maggie |
| 22:08:00h | 'My watch is always a little fast,' I said. 'What time do you make it now?' 'Ten eight.' 'Ten eighteen by mine. You see.' | The Quiet American | Graham Greene | Oskar101 |
| 22:10:00h | That was the past, and now I had just died on the narrow couch of a Paris lodging house, and my wife was crouching on the floor, crying bitterly. The white light before my left eye was growing dim, but I remembered the room perfectly. On the left there was a chest of drawers, on the right a mantelpiece surmounted by a damaged clock without a pendulum, the hands of which marked ten minutes past ten. The window overlooked the Rue Dauphine, a long, dark street. All Paris seemed to pass below, and the noise was so great that the window shook. | The Death of Olivier Becaille | Emile Zola | Cindeesan |
| 22:12:30h | The Chinese women scuttled at an amazing rate, given their size and the bags' size. It was c. 2212:30-40h., smack in the middle of the former Interval of Issues Resolution. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 22:14:10h | The shopping bags looked heavy and impressive, thier weight making the Chinese women lean in slightly towards each other. Call it 2214:10h. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 22:15:00h | "Aargh Newsnight on in 15 minutes" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:16:00h | And also between 2216 and 2226 the ATHSCME giant fans off up at the Sunstrand Plaza within earshot were typically shut off for daily de-linting, and it was quiet except for the big Ssshhh of a whole urban city's vehicular traffic.,and maybe the odd E.W.D. airborne deliverer catapulted up off Concavityward, its little string of lights arcing northeast; and of course also the sirens, both the Eurotrochaic sirens of ambulances and the regular U.S.-sounding sirens of the city's very Finest, Protecting and Serving, keeping the citizenry at bay; and the winsome thing about sirens in the urban night is that unless they're right up close where the lights bathe you in red-blue-red-blue they always sound like they're terribly achingly far away, and receding, calling to you across an expanding gap. Either that or they're on your ass. No middle distance with sirens, Lenz reflects, walking along and scanning. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | t |
| 22:17:00h | "Casette will not go in" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:18:00h | 'My watch is always a little fast,' I said. 'What time do you make it now?' 'Ten eight.' 'Ten eighteen by mine. You see.' | The Quiet American | Graham Greene | Oskar101 |
| 22:18:00h | "pm Ah. Thelma and Louise is in there" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:21:00h | On a Saturday c. 2221h., Lenz found a miniature bird that had fallen out of some nest and was sitting bald and pencil-necked on the lawn of Unit #3 flapping ineffectually, and went in with Green and ducked Green and went back outside to # 3's lawn and put the thing in a pocket and went in and put it down the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink of the kitchen, but still felt largely impotent and unresolved. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | Alex Jenkins |
| 22:21:00h | "Thelma and Louise will not come out" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:21:00h | "Frenziedly press all buttons. Cassette comes out and goes back in again" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:25:00h | "Got new cassette in now. Right. Turn to "Recording.................. Aargh Newsnight is starting" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:26:00h | As always, consciousness returned to me progressively from the edges of my field of vision. The first things to claim recognition were the bathroom door emerging from the far right and a lamp from the far left, from which my awareness gradually drifted inward like ice flowing together toward the middle of a lake. In the exact center of my visual field was the alarm clock, hands pointing to ten-twenty-six. An alarm clock I received as a memento of somebody's wedding. One of those clever designs. You had to press the red button on the left side of the clock and the black button on the right side simultaneously to stop it from ringing, which was said to preempt the reflex of killing the alarm and falling back to sleep. True, in order to press both left and right buttons simultaneously, I did have to sit upright in bed with the thing in my lap, and by then I had made a step into the waking world. | Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Haruki Murakami | cindeesan |
| 22:30:00h | She looked at the clock; it was ten thirty. If she could get there quickly on the subway, then she could be at his house in less than an hour, maybe a bit longer if the late trains did not come so often. | Brooklyn p. 181 hardback ed | Colm Toibin | Bronte |
| 22:31:00h | And, later on, at 10.31 pm, I went out onto the balcony to find out whether I could see any stars, but there weren't any because of all the clouds and what is called Light Pollution which is light from streetlights and car headlights and floodlights and lights in buildings reflecting off tiny particles in the atmosphere and getting in the way of light from the stars. So I went back inside. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 22:31:00h | And, later on, at 10.31 pm, I went out onto the balcony to find out whether I could see any stars, but there weren't any because of all the clouds and what is called Light Pollution which is light from streetlights and car headlights and floodlights and lights in buildings reflecting off tiny particles in the atmosphere and getting in the way of light from the stars. So I went back inside. | The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightime | Mark Haddon | crumbs |
| 22:31:00h | "Ok OK. Calm. Penny Husbands-Bosworth,so asbestos leukaemia item is not on yet" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:33:00h | "Yessss, yessss. RECORDING CURRENT PROGRAMME. Have done it. Aargh. All going mad. Cassette has started rewinding and now stopped and ejected. Why? Shit. Shit. Realize in excitement have sat on remote control." | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:35:00h | "Frantic now. Have rung ......... Nobody know how to programme their videos. Only person I know who knows how to do it is Daniel." | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:45:00h | IT's well after 2245h. the dog's leash slides hissing to the end of the Day-Glo line and stops the dog a couple of paces from the inside of teh gate, where Lenz is standing, inclined in the slight forward way of somebody who's talking baby-talk to a dog. | Infinite Jest | d | translated |
| 22:45:00h | Alec pricked up his ears. "When was that?" "Oh, yesterday evening." "What time?" "About a quarter to eleven. I was playing bridge." | Dead in the water | Carola Dunn | stjerome1st |
| 22:45:00h | "Oh God Daniel fell about laughing when I said I could not programme video. Said he would do it for me. Still at least I have done best for Mum. It is exciting and historic when one's friends are on TV" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 22:50:00h | So think yourself lucky while you're awake and remember a happy crew. Think of Hamburg on the Magic Night. 22.50 and they went out neatly, just as they should - you couldn't fault Parks, he was always on his route. 'Burton Coggles, Carlton Scroop, Sloothby...' But he never tired of reeling off place names as they drove for the coast. 'Mavis Enderby - it's great that you guys really would call anywhere Mavis Enderby. Sounds like a librarian...' Skipper let him run for a while and then closed him down. 'You get two more and then you shut up.' It was all part of how Alfred started - checking RT and oxygen, pressing the cheek piece on his reflector sight, the comfort of it - feeling the wool of Joyce's hat comfy on his head and thinking of her, just the once, before he hides her all away - and hearing random offerings from the map. | Day | A. L. Kennedy | Raylr |
| 22:50:00h | 10.50 P. M. This diary-keeping of mine is, I fancy, the outcome of that scientific habit of mind about which I wrote this morning. I like to register impressions while they are fresh. Once a day at least I endeavor to define my own mental position. It is a useful piece of self-analysis, and has, I fancy, a steadying effect upon the character. Frankly, I must confess that my own needs what stiffening I can give it. I fear that, after all, much of my neurotic temperament survives, and that I am far from that cool, calm precision which characterizes Murdoch or Pratt- Haldane. Otherwise, why should the tomfoolery which I have witnessed this evening have set my nerves thrilling so that even now I am all unstrung? My only comfort is that neither Wilson nor Miss Penclosa nor even Agatha could have possibly known my weakness. | The Parasite | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Cindeesan |
| 22:55:00h | "It is eleven o'clock! Eleven o'clock, all but five minutes!" "But which eleven o'clock?" "The eleven o'clock that is to decide life or death!...He told me so just before he went....He is terrible....He is quite mad: he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames!...He did nothing but laugh!...He said, `I give you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here,' he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, `here is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the Louis-Philippe room. ...In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no.' And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torture-chamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request....But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake!... And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, `The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!'" | The Phantom of the Opera | Gaston Leroux | Cindeesan |
| 22:57:00h | He says, "They've killed Jan. Clear out." "The suitcase?" I ask. "Take it away again. We want nothing to do with it now. Catch the eleven o'clock express." "But it doesn't stop here...." "It will. Go to track six. Opposite the freight station. You have three minutes". "But.." "Move, or I'll have to arrest you." | If on a winter's night a traveller | Italo Calvino | GolanD |
| 22:57:00h | He says, "They've killed Jan. Clear out." "The suitcase?" I ask. "Take it away again. We want nothing to do with it now. Catch the eleven o'clock express." "But it doesn't stop here...." "It will. Go to track six. Opposite the freight station. You have three minutes." "But..." "Move, or I'll have to arrest you." | If on a winter's night a traveller | Italo Calvino | GolanD |
| 22:59:00h | They parked the car outside Lowther's at precisely one minute to eleven. People were leaving, not all of them happy at having their evening curtailed. But the grumbling was muted, and even then it only started once they were safely on the street. | The Complaints | Ian Rankin | DennisPreston |
| 22.00:00h | Of course, they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after ten o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed. | The Dead | James Joyce | VaariC |
| 22.30:00h | The time was ten-thirty but it could have been three in the morning, because along its borders, West Berlin goes to bed with the dark | Smiley's People | John Le Carre | k1 |
| 22.45:00 | So the Lackadaisical Broadcasting Co. bids you farewell with the message that if you aren't grateful to be living in a world where so many things to be grateful for are yours as a matter of course. Why it is now five seconds until fifteen minutes before eleven o'clock and you are just an old Trojan Horse. | Good Intentions | Ogden Nash | thefatcontroller |
| 23:00:00h | The train arrived in New York at eleven that night. | The Recognitions, III, p. 444, Penguin pb edn | William Gaddis | Bronte |
| 23:00:00h | They didn't even sit down to eat until 2300h. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 23:00:00h | The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adele, whose head leant against my shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies sought their chambers. | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte | JLM |
| 23:00:00h | It was quite late, already eleven o'clock, when the guests, having once again ended up together in the conservatory, almost as one began to leave. (My translation of a translation) | Buddenbrooks | Thomas Mann | AJ Jansson |
| 23:00:00h | At eleven o'clock that night, having secured a bed at one of the hotels and telegraphed his address to his father immediately on his arrival, he walked out into the streets of Sandbourne. It was too late to call on or inquire for any one, and he reluctantly postponed his purpose till the morning. But he could not retire to rest just yet. This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and its western stations, its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its covered gardens, was, to Angel Clare, like a fairy place suddenly created by the stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty. An outlying eastern tract of the enormous Egdon Waste was close at hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity such a glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring up. | Tess of the d'Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy | frustrated artist |
| 23:00:00h | When they reached the top of the Astronomy Tower at eleven o'clock, they found a perfect night for stargazing, cloudless and still. | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | JK Rowling | Habibti |
| 23:00:00h | 'He will be here at eleven exactly, sir.' At the bar, naked couples had begun dancing | Smiley's People | John le Carre | k1 |
| 23:00:00h | At eleven o'clock, I rang the bell for Betteredge, and told Mr. Blake that he might at last prepare himself for bed. | The Moonstone | Wilkie Collins | JLM |
| 23:00:00h | Then it grew dark; she would have had them to bed, but they begged sadly to be allowed to stay up; and, just about eleven o’clock, the door-latch was raised quietly, and in stepped the master. | Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | @outofprinttees |
| 23:05:00h | It was five minutes past eleven when I made my last entry. I remember winding up my watch and noting the time. So I have wasted some five hours of the little span still left to us. Who would have believed it possible? But I feel very much fresher, and ready for my fate--or try to persuade myself that I am. And yet, the fitter a man is, and the higher his tide of life, the more must he shrink from death. How wise and how merciful is that provision of nature by which his earthly anchor is usually loosened by many little imperceptible tugs, until his consciousness has drifted out of its untenable earthly harbor into the great sea beyond! | The Poison Belt | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Cindeesan |
| 23:05:00h | It was 11.5, five minutes later than my habitual bedtime. I felt. I felt guilty at being still up, but the past kept pricking at me and I knew that all the events of those nineteen days in July were astir within me, like the loosening phlegm in an attack of bronchitis | The Go-Between | L.P.Hartley | Richard Roberts |
| 23:07:00h | At 11.07 pm, Samuel "Gunner" Wilson was moving at 645 miles per hour over the Mojave Desert. Up ahead in the moonlinght, he saw the twin lead jets, their afterburners glowing angrily in the night sky. | The Andromeda Strain | Michael Crichton | DennisPreston |
| 23:10:00h | Another Christmas day is nearly over. It's ten past eleven. Richard declined with thanks my offer to make up a bed for him here in my study, and has driven off back to Cambridge, so I am able to make some notes on the day before going to bed myself. | Deaf Sentence | David Lodge | Traverso 1685 |
| 23:11:00h | Life changes fast Life changes in an instant You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The Question of self-pity. Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," but that would have been a case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words, in January 2004, a day or two after the fact. For a long time I wrote nothing else. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | KDMiller |
| 23:15:00h | On arriving home at a quarter-past eleven, we found a hansom cab, which had been waiting for me for two hours with a letter. Sarah said she did not know what to do, as we had not left the address where we had gone. | Dairy of a Nobody | George and Weedon Grossmith | JLM |
| 23:15:00h | "Humph. Mum just rang "Sorry, darling. It isn't Newsnigtht, it's Breakfast News tomorrow. Could you set it for seven o'clock tomorrow morning, BBC1?" | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 23:16:00h | But I couldn't get out of the house straight away because he would see me, so I would have to wait until he was asleep. The time was 11.16 pm. I tried doubling 2s again, but I couldn't get past 2(15) which was 32,768. So I groaned to make the time pass quicker and not think. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 23:20:00h | From Balboa Island, he drove south to Laguna Beach. At eleven-twenty, he parked his van across the street from the Hudston house. It was in the hills, a single-story home slung on a steep slope to take advantage of ocean views. He saw lights in a couple of windows. He climbed between the seats and sat down in the back of the van, out of sight, to wait until all of the Hudstons had gone to bed. Soon after leaving the Yarbeck house, he had changed out of his blue suit into gray slacks, a white shirt, a maroon sweater, and a dark-blue nylon jacket. Now, in the darkness, he had nothing to do except take his weapons out of a cardboard box, where they were hidden beneath two loaves of bread, a four-roll package of toilet tissue, and other items that gave the impression he had just been to the market. | Watchers | Dean Koontz | Cindeesan |
| 23:25:00h | Holt was astonished - "dumbfounded" is the word that he used in telling it - yet seems to have retained a certain intelligent curiosity. To test the intensity of the light whose nature and cause he could not determine, he took out his watch to see if he could make out the figures on the dial. They were plainly visible, and the hands indicated the hour of eleven o'clock and twenty-five minutes. At that moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself athwart the landscape. In that unearthly illumination he saw near him, but apparently in the air at a considerable elevation, the figure of his wife, clad in her night-clothing and holding to her breast the figure of his child. Her eyes were fixed upon his with an expression which he afterward professed himself unable to name or describe, further than that it was "not of this life." | A Wireless Message (short story) | Ambrose Bierce | Cindeesan |
| 23:30:00h | It's always opening time in the Sailors Arms | Under Milk Wood | Dylan Thomas | Aireman |
| 23:30:00h | He would catch the night bus for Casablanca, the one that left the beach at half past eleven. | 'The Dismissal', in Midnight Mass & Other Stories | Paul Bowles | Bronte |
| 23:30:00h | He loaded the player and turned on the viewer, his knees popping again as he squatted to set the cue to 2330. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 23:30:00h | "Daniel just called. "Er, sorry, Bridge. I'm not quite sure what went wrong. It's recorded Barry Norman." | Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | thefatcontroller |
| 23:30:00h | The Picton boat was due to leave at half-past eleven. It was a beautiful night, mild, starry, only when they got out of the cab and started to walk down the Old Wharf that jutted out into the harbour, a faint wind blowing off the water ruffled under Fenella's hat, and she put up her hand to keep it on. | “The Voyage” | Katherine Mansfield | alimison |
| 23:32:00h | And then it started to rain and I got wet and I started shivering because I was cold. And then it was 11.32 pm and I heard voices of people walking along the street. And a voice said, 'I don't care whether you thought it was funny or not,' and it was a lady's voice. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 23:32:00h | And then it was 11.32pm and I heard voices of people walking along the street. | The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightime | Mark Haddon | crumbs |
| 23:32:00h | "This is the evening. This is the night. It is New Year´s Eve. In about twenty-eight minutes it will be midnight. I still have twenty-eight minutes left. I have to recollect my thoughts. At twelve o´clock, I should be done thinking." He looked at his father. "Help those that are depressed and consider themselves lost in this world," he thought. "Old fart." | The Evenings | Gerard Reve | Machiel |
| 23:35:00h | Eleven thirty-four. We stand on the sidewalk in front of Jean's apartment on the Upper East Side. Her doorman eyes us warily and fills me with a nameless dread, his gaze piercing me from the lobby. A curtain of stars, miles of them, are scattered, glowing, across the sky and their multitude humbles me, which I have a hard time tolerating. She shrugs and nods after I say something about forms of anxiety. It's as if her mind is having a hard time communicating with her mouth, as if she is searching for a rational analysis of who I am, which is, of course, an impossibility: there ... is ... no ... key. | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | |
| 23:36:00h | Then Green knocks at the front door at 2336 - Gately has to Log the exact time and then it's his call whether to unlock the door. | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | translated |
| 23:39:00h | There's a whisper down the line at 11.39 When the Night Mail's ready to depart, Saying "Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble? We must find him or the train can't start." | Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats) | T S Eliot | Irene & Bookshop Becky |
| 23:40:00h | Later.--Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when basely used. I felt so thankful that Lord Godalming is rich, and both he and Mr. Morris, who also has plenty of money, are willing to spend it so freely. For if they did not, our little expedition could not start, either so promptly or so well equipped, as it will within another hour. It is not three hours since it was arranged what part each of us was to do. And now Lord Godalming and Jonathan have a lovely steam launch, with steam up ready to start at a moment's notice. Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris have half a dozen good horses, well appointed. We all have the maps and appliances of various kinds that can be had. Professor Van Helsing and I are to leave by the 11:40 train tonight for Veresti, where we are to get a carriage to drive to the Borgo Pass. We are bringing a good deal of ready money, as we are to buy a carriage and horses. We shall drive ourselves, for we have no one whom we can trust in the matter. The Professor knows something of a great many languages, so we shall get on all right. We have all got arms, even for me a large bore revolver. Jonathan would not be happy unless I was armed like the rest. ... | Dracula | Bram Stoker | Cindeesan |
| 23:41:00h | 11:40pm Bartlett was twenty feet under a cat's cradle of girders that kept the wreckage from crushing him. When the avalanche had hit almost three hours ago he had been standing in the kitchen doorway sipping an ice-cold beer, staring out at the city. He was bathed, dressed and feeling wonderful, waiting for Orlanda to return. Then he was falling, the whole world wrong, unearthly, the floor coming up, the stars below, the city above. There had been a blinding, monstrous, soundless explosion and all air had rushed out of him and he had fallen into the upward pit forever. Coming back to consciousness was a long process for him. It was dark within his tomb and he hurt everywhere. He could not grasp what had happened or where he was. When he truly awoke, he stared around trying to see where he was, his hands touching things he could not understand. The closed darkness nauseated him and he reeled in panic to his feet, smashing his head against a jutting chunk of concrete that was once part of the outside wall and fell back stunned, his fall protected by the debris of an easy chair. In a little while his mind cleared, but his head ached, arms ached, body ached. The phosphorescent figures on his watch attracted his attention. He peered at them. The time was 11:41. I remember...what do I remember? | Noble House | James Clavell | pjaj |
| 23:45:00h | The church clocks chimed three quarters past eleven, as two figures emerged on London Bridge. One, which advanced with a swift and rapid step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly about her as though in quest of some expected object; the other figure was that of a man who slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find, and, at some distance, accommodated his pace to hers: stopping when she stopped: and as she moved again, creeping stealthily on: but never allowing himself, in the ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps. (Chapter XLVI- Noah follows Nancy to her meeting with Rose Maylie) | Oliver Twist | Charles Dickens | davidabsalom |
| 23:45:00h | We struck the tow-path at length, and that made us happy because prior to this we had not been sure whether we were walking towards the river or away from it, and when you are tired and want to go to bed, uncertainties like that worry you. We passed Shiplake as the clock was striking the quarter to twelve and then George said thoughtfully: 'You don't happen to remember which of the islands it was, do you?' | Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K. Jerome | Raylr |
| 23:50:00h | At 11:50 P.M., I got up extremely quietly, took my things from under the bed, and opened the door one millimeter at a time, so it wouldn't make any noise. | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer | kwillz |
| 23:53:00h | It was 7 minutes to midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears' house. | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time | Mark Haddon | AggieH |
| 23:55:00h | "I am going to lock you in. It is-" he consulted his watch, "five minutes to midnight. Miss Granger, three turns should do it. Good luck." | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | J. K. Rowling | mistysolitude |
| 23:55:00h | Little by little, he became so interested in putting me right that he forgot to fidget in the bed. His mind was far away from the question of the opium, at the all-important time when his eyes first told me that the opium was beginning to lay its hold on his brain. I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to twelve, when the premonitory symptoms of the working of the laudanum first showed themselves to me. At this time, no unpractised eyes would have detected any change in him. But, as the minutes of the new morning wore away, the swiftly-subtle progress of the influence began to show itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed in his eyes; the dew of a stealthy perspiration began to glisten on his face. | The Moonstone | Wilkie Collins | frustrated artist |
| 23:57:00h | Wells looked out at the street. What time is it? he said. Chigurh raised his wrist and looked at his watch. Eleven fifty-seven he said. Wells nodded. By the old woman's calendar I've got three more minutes. | No Country for Old Men | Cormac McCarthy | Irv |
| 23:59:00h | Chigurgh rose and picked up the empty casing off the rug and blew into it and put it in his pocket and looked at his watch. The new day was still a minute away. | No Country for Old Men | Cormac McCarthy | Irv |
| 24:00:00h | I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. The clock once belonged to my great-grandmother (a woman called Alice) and its tired chime counts me into the world. | BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM | Kate Atkinson | suzig |
| 24:00:00h | Big Ben concluded the run-up, struck and went on striking. (...) But, odder still - Big Ben had once again struck midnight. The time outside still corresponded to that registered by the stopped gilt clock, inside. Inside and outside matched exactly, but both were badly wrong. H'm. | Nights At The Circus | Angela Carter | scribler |
| 24:00:00h | The clock striketh twelve O it strikes, it strikes! Now body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. O soul, be changed into little water drops, And fall into the ocean, ne'er to be found. My God, my God, look not so fierce on me! | Dr Faustus | Christopher Marlowe | Mt_Gilley |
| 24:00:00h | "That a man who could hardly see anything more than two feet away from him could be employed as a security guard suggested to me that our job was not to secure anything but to report for work every night, fill the bulky ledger with cryptic remarks like 'Patrolled perimeter 12.00 pm, No Incident' and go to the office every fortnight for our wages and listen to the talkative Ms Elgassier." | A Squatter's Tale | Ike Oguine | AggieH |
| 24:00:00h | At midnight his wife and daughter might still be bustling about, preparing holiday delicacies in the kitchen, straightening up the house, or perhaps getting their kimonos ready or arranging flowers. Oki would sit in the living room and listen to the radio. As the bells rang he would look back at the departing year. He always found it a moving experience. | Beauty and Sadness | Yasunari Kawabata [translated by Howard Hibbett] | |
| 24:00:00h | 'The first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle Toby up stairs, which was about 10 - Mrs. Wadman threw herself into her arm chair, and crossing her left knee with her right, which formed a resting-place for her elbow, she reclin'd her cheek upon the palm of her hand, and leaning forwards, ruminated until midnight upon both sides of the question.' | The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | Laurence Sterne | AggieH |
| 24:00:00h | BERNARDO 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco. | Hamlet | Shakspeare | translated |
| 24:00:00h | "To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry simultaneously. - David Copperfield is born. | David Copperfield | Charles Dickens | Heather Lyons |
| 24:00:00h | Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises or falls but is pregnant with foreboding. | After Dark | Murakami | ilikethecutofyourjib |
| 24:00:00h | After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down. After midnight, we're gonna chug-a-lug and shout. We're gonna stimulate some action; We're gonna get some satisfaction. We're gonna find out what it is all about. After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down. | After midnight | J J Cale | Rose_red |
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