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Time & Perspective Quote by Brian Lumley

"There are lots of other things that I haven't done, places I haven't seen. So eventually I'll have to find time for those things while there still is time"

About this Quote

Mortality is doing the quiet heckling here, and Brian Lumley lets it speak in plain language rather than gothic flourish. The line starts with a traveler’s inventory - undone things, unseen places - but the real subject is the shrinking window in which a life can still be revised. The repetition of "time" works like a tightening knot: first as a scheduling problem ("find time"), then as a finite resource ("while there still is time"). That pivot is the sentence’s trick. It turns aspiration into urgency without melodrama.

Coming from a horror writer best known for cosmic dread and the long shadow of consequence, the quote reads like a private aside from someone who’s spent a career imagining what happens when humans underestimate the limits placed on them. Instead of monsters, the antagonist is the calendar. "Eventually" is doing a lot of work, too: it’s the word people use to domesticate anxiety, to pretend desire can be postponed safely. Lumley undercuts that comfort by immediately adding the deadline clause.

The intent feels less like bucket-list sentimentality and more like a warning against professional and personal tunnel vision. Writers, especially prolific ones, can live inside projects for decades, mistaking productivity for fullness. Lumley’s phrasing suggests an awareness that art is not a substitute for experience - and that the cost of deferring life is paid all at once, at the end, when "eventually" runs out.

Quote Details

TopicWanderlust
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Lumley, Brian. (2026, January 16). There are lots of other things that I haven't done, places I haven't seen. So eventually I'll have to find time for those things while there still is time. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-are-lots-of-other-things-that-i-havent-done-123419/

Chicago Style
Lumley, Brian. "There are lots of other things that I haven't done, places I haven't seen. So eventually I'll have to find time for those things while there still is time." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-are-lots-of-other-things-that-i-havent-done-123419/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There are lots of other things that I haven't done, places I haven't seen. So eventually I'll have to find time for those things while there still is time." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-are-lots-of-other-things-that-i-havent-done-123419/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Brian Lumley (born February 2, 1937) is a Writer from England.

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