Trains Quotes

When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.

This is Denmark. We are Danes. We keep our distance. We do not pick a seat close to strangers if other seats are available. We do not talk to strangers in the trains.”William Wilson in the short story 'Metro' by Steen Langstrup

It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, but it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: music, laughter,the physics of falling leaves, automobiles, holding hands,the scent of rain, the concept of subway trains... if only one could leave this life slowly!

It's a finger snapping kind of day.

The train hit her with the sound of a meat-filled hefty bag smacking the pavement, and the effect was much the same, I guess. (Dark City Lights)

So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone.

Early youth is a baffling time. The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you. Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made. In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting before a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train.

Life will hack off your head and shit down your neck every chance it gets. I've found that consuming drugs and booze, listening to music and always having an excuse in the best way to tip the scales.

I've always felt that distant train whistles heard in the dead of night are the universe's way of letting us know the best days are neither ahead nor behind us...they're happening right now, cradled in the palms of our hands. But that doesn't change the fact that the whiskey, weed, and romance eventually runs out and the night will soon turn to day.

Do you remember the long orphanage of the train stationsWe crossed cities that turn-tabled all dayAnd vomited at night the sunshine of the day ("The Voyager")

Maybe she had it wrong all this time and her empty heart could never be filled by his ingenious broken spirit. Maybe this yearning had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her.

I’ll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I’m seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train’s going to come. And after that, another train’s going to come. Here, I’ll let you guess what’s going to happen afterwards. I’ll give you a hint—there’s a train.

The train may fall in love with a station, but it has to go and it goes! Don’t be like the train; stay at the station you fell in love, go nowhere!

A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.

When it happens and it hits hard, we decide certain things, and realize there's truth in all those dark, lonely days" He had an instantaneous look about him,a glimmer and a glint over those eyes,he knew how the world worked,and took pleasure in its wickedness.He would give a dime or two to those sitting on the street,he would tell them things like:"It won't get any better,"and"Might as well use this to buy your next fix,"and finally"It's better to die high than to live sober,"His suit was pressed nicely, with care and respect,like the kind a corpse wears,he'd say that was his way of honoring the dead,of always being ready for the oncoming train,I liked him,he never wore a fake smileand he was always ready to tell a story about how andwhen"We all wake up alone," he said once,"Oftentimes even when sleeping next to someone, we wake up before them and they are still asleep and suddenly we are awake, and alone."I didn't see him for a few days,a few days later it felt like it'd been weeks,those weeks drifted apart from one another,like leaves on a pond's surface,and became like months.And then I saw him and I asked him where he'd been,he said,"I woke up alone one day, just like any other, and I decided I didn't like it anymore.

Writers do not have the privilege of sleep. There is always a story coming alive in their heads, constantly composing. Whether they choose it or not.

I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each lettter.Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips.A name I won’t throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought.And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form….. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart.

I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.

I’m mistaken….for thinking you were someone with a heart worth breaking.

Trains are beautiful. They take people to places they've never been, faster than they could ever go themselves. Everyone who works on trains knows they have personalities, they're like people. They have their own mysteries.

It was the day after Thanksgiving. I was the 3 p.m. backwaiter, but the trains were running irregularly, and while I had heard one sighing into the station as I ran down the stairs, my card was out of money. Which is to say, I was late.

He offered her power, money, status...a giant prison, all in exchange for only...her soul.

You’re a mess, I confess, I despise you in the best kind of way.

You don’t deserve my image in your head. You don’t deserve my memories in your chest.

He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words he had carefully spoken to me. I knew it in that instant. He was a viscerally driven man. And one day, he would possess me.

It's not getting from A to B. It's not the beginning or the destination that counts. It's the ride in between...This train is alive with things that should be seen and heard. It's a living, breathing something -- you just have to want to learn its rhythm.

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.

Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.

The rage for railroads is so great that many will be laid in parts where they will not pay.

I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench;--then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards, its barns and old lime trees. The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth.

I won’t let you have it. I won’t give you this moment. I won’t let you fill up this valuable organ...I own it. I won’t do it. I can’t think, I won’t think about it.

Now he slept soundly through the nights, and often he dreamed of trains, and often of one particular train: He was on it; he could smell the coal smoke; a world went by. And then he was standing in that world as the sound of the train died away. A frail familiarity in these scenes hinted to him that they came from his childhood. Sometimes he woke to hear the sound of the Spokane International fading up the valley and realized he’d been hearing the locomotive as he dreamed.

If you sleep on the train, you will miss your station; if you sleep at the station, you will miss your train! You can control your fate only when you are awake!

What is it about me that gets them all crying? It’s not the end of the world.

In America, Fredericka, they don't really have trains for people. The trains here are used mainly to transport pigs, television sets, and fruit.

The trains always arrive at your station. The question is which one to take?

It’s been my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they’re going. For them it’s the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello. That’s why trains are so popular at Christmas. People get on to meet their country over the holidays. They’re looking for some friendship, a warm body to talk to. People don’t rush on a train, because that’s not what trains are for. How do you put a dollar value on that? What accounting line does that go on?

The last wendigo died in 1962, or so the story goes. Reputedly, he (it?) stood in front of the train to Churchill, Manitoba, believing that the train would stop for him, a supernatural being, and then he would be able to eat the passengers. The train ran him over. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The restlessness and the longing, like the longing that is in the whistle of a faraway train. Except that the longing isn't really in the whistle—it is in you.