Tick-tock Quotes

It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it. They'd never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. ... Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning's sake-which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curriculum had dissolved and been replaced by activities improvised from day to day by teachers and parents: hiking in the mountains, doing art projects about the Cloud Ark, talking with psychologists about death, reading favorite books. In one sense Amelia and her colleagues had never been more needed, never had such an opportunity to show their quality. (Neal Stephenson)

Midnight, when the monotonous tick-tock of diurnal progress is for one throbbing moment replaced by the cool but smokey honk of a saxophone, alternately seductive and threatening. Midnight. The black growth on the clock face that has to be biopsied every twenty-four hours to see whether it is malignant or benign.

Tom Robbins