Time & Perspective Quote by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman turns a small domestic irritation into a sly jab at how we narrate our own lives. “I lost some time once” borrows the casual voice of someone admitting they’ve misplaced their keys. That understatement is the hook: time isn’t just valuable, it’s treated like an object you can mislay and then recover if you’re diligent enough. The joke lands because it mimics a familiar idiom about lost things being “in the last place you look,” then quietly reveals the phrase’s built-in absurdity. Of course it’s the last place you look; once you find it, you stop searching. The line exposes how much of our “common sense” is just a comforting loop.

The subtext is sharper than the whimsy suggests. We chase time like a missing possession because it lets us believe time can be managed, reclaimed, made to behave. Gaiman nudges that fantasy and lets it deflate on its own. The humor isn’t merely cute; it’s a pressure valve for the anxiety that modern life produces: the sense that we’re perpetually behind, that the minutes were taken from us by someone else’s calendar invite, commute, algorithm, or obligation.

As an author who traffics in fairy-tale logic and contemporary dread, Gaiman uses the grammar of a one-liner to smuggle in a darker premise: time doesn’t get “found.” It just stops being yours. The line works because it refuses melodrama. It laughs at the problem while leaving the consequence intact.