Mark Haddon Quote

Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or abiscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don't have amap it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find theprotractor or the biscuit again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don't have a timetabletime is not there like the landing and the garden and the route to school. Because time is only therelationship between the way different things change, like the earth going round the sun and atomsvibrating and clocks ticking and day and night and waking up and going to sleep, and it is like west ornor-nor-east, which won't exist when the earth stops existing and falls into the sun because it is only arelationship between the North Pole and the South Pole and everywhere else, like Mogadishu andSunderland and Canberra.And it isn't a fixed relationship like the relationship between our house and Mrs. Shears's house, or likethe relationship between 7 and 865, but it depends on how fast you are going relative to a specific point.And if you go off in a spaceship and you travel near the speed of light, you may come back and find thatall your family is dead and you are still young and it will be the future but your clock will say that youhave only been away for a few days or months.And because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, this means that we can only know about afraction of the things that go on in the universe,