At the age of 21, Tim discovers he can travel in time and change what happens and has happened in his own life. His decision to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend turns out not to be as easy as you might think.

Tim: And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did: The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.
Tim: We're all traveling through time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride.
Tim: Lesson Number One: All the time traveling in the world can't make someone love you.
Tim: And so he told me his secret formula for happiness. Part one of the two part plan was that I should just get on with ordinary life, living it day by day, like anyone else.
Tim: But then came part two of Dad's plan. He told me to live every day again almost exactly the same. The first time with all the tensions and worries that stop us noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time noticing. Okay, Dad. Let's give it a go.
Mary: I'm going to go into the bedroom and put on my new pajamas, and in a minute you can come in and take them off.
Tim: There's a song by Baz Luhrmann called Sunscreen. He says worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.
Mum: I am fucking furious. I am so uninterested in a life without your father.
Mary: I'm not taking my panties off for Scotland!
Dad: I'd only give one piece of advice to anyone marrying. We're all quite similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many times. But try and marry someone kind. And this is a kind man with a good heart.
Dad: I'm not particularly proud of many things in my life, but I am very proud to be the father of my son.
Kit Kat: Maybe, just maybe, I'm the faller. every family has someone who falls, who doesn't make the grade, who stumbles, who life trips up. Maybe I'm our faller.
Harry: It was the Titanic of play openings but with no survivors. No women, no children, not even Kate Winslet, all dead.
Tim: Mum, this is Mary.
Mum: Mary! Good Lord, you're pretty.
Mary: Oh, no. It's just... I've got a lot of mascara and lipstick on.
Mum: Let's have a look.
Mary: [presents her face]
Mum: Oh, yes. Good. It's very bad for a girl to be too pretty. It stops her developing a sense of humor. Or a personality.
Tim: No one can ever prepare you for what happens when you have a child. When you see the baby in your arms and you know that it's your job now. No one can prepare you for the love and the fear.
Dad: You can't kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy.
Mary: Actually, I look like Kate Moss.
Tim: Really?
Mary: No, I sort of look like a squirrel.
Tim: Do you like Kate Moss?
Mary: I absolutely love her! In fact, I almost wore one of her dresses here tonight. You?
Tim: No, no. Her clothes look terrible on me.
[Tim has just learned his dad is dying of cancer]
Tim: It's just... I though with the time thing...
Dad: No, I never said we could fix things. I specifically never said that. Life's a mixed bag, no matter who you are. Look at Jesus: he was the son of a God, for God's sake and look how that turned out.
Tim: I know... You must see I feel a bit cheated.
Dad: Don't. In fact, feel the opposite. The only people who give up work at 50 are the time travelers with cancer who want to play more table tennis with their sons.
Tim: I used to think my phone was old and shit, but it's suddenly my most valuable possession.
Mary: You really like me? Even my frock?
Tim: I love your frock.
Mary: And, um, my hair. It's not too brown?
Tim: I love brown.
Mary: My fringe is new.
Tim: Your fringe is perfect. Fringe is the best fit.
Tim: What do you think of her?
Dad: I like her more than you already.
Dad: Life's a mixed bag, no matter who you are.
Mum: And what are your faults? I mean, little weaknesses.
Mary: Well, I'm very insecure.
Mum: Sweet.
Tim: So what do you do?
Mary: I'm a reader at a publisher.
Tim: No! Do you read for a living?
Mary: Yes, that it. I read.
Tim: Oh that's so great! If that someone else asking: "What do you do for a living ?" Oh, well, I breathe. I'm a breather. I get pay for breathing. How did you get that job?
[first lines]
Tim: I always knew we were a fairly odd family. First there was me. Too tall, too skinny, too orange. My mum was lovely, but not like other mums. There was something solid about her. Something rectangular, busy and unsentimental. Her fashion icon was the queen. Dad, well, he was more normal. He always seemed to have time on his hands. After giving up teaching university students on his 50th birthday, he was eternally available for a leisurely chat or to let me win at table tennis.
Tim: And then there was mum's brother, Uncle Desmond. Always impeccably dressed. He spent the days just, well, being Uncle Desmond. He was the most charming and least clever man you could ever meet. His mind was on other things, though we never found out what. And then, finally there was Catherine. Katie. Kit Kat. My sister. In a household of sensible jackets and haircuts there was this, well, what can I call her - nature thing. With her elfin eyes, her purple T-shirts and her eternally bare feet. She was then, and still is to me, about the most wonderful thing in the world.
Tim: All in all it was a pretty good childhood. Full of repeated rhythms and patterns. By the time I was 21, we were still having tea on the beach every single day. Skimming stones and eating sandwiches, summer and winter, no matter what the weather.
[all laughing]
Tim: And every Friday night a film, no matter what the weather. And then once a year, the dreaded New Year's Eve party...
Harry: [Points at photo] That is my daughter.
Tim: Oh.
Harry: Have sex with her if you like. Apparently everyone else has.
Mum: It's very bad for a girl to be too pretty; stops her from developing a sense of humor... or a personality.
Tim: No one can prepare you for the love from the people you love can feel for them, and nothing can prepare you for the indifferences of friends who don't have babies.
Tim: Oh look! I've forgotten this. Jimmy Fontana, Il Mondo.
Dad: Greatest record ever recorded by an Italian who looks like he's got a dead badger on his head.
Kit Kat: You're kidding! I can go anywhere in time and you bring me back to the worst party of all time.
Tim: For me, it was always going to be about love. And that summer, I walked into the eye of the storm. Her name was Charlotte - cousin of Kit Kat's handsome but nasty boyfriend, Jimmy. And she was staying two whole months.
Tim: And so I woke up the next morning. Hungover. Ashamed of myself and not realizing it was the day that would change my life forever.
Tim: Never trust a blueberry.
Tim: I know you've probably suspected this, but over the last month, I've fallen completely in love with you. Now, obviously this was going to happen because you're a goddess with that face, and that hair. But even if you didn't have a nice face, and even if you had absolutely no hair because of some bizarre medical reason, I'd still adore you. And I wondered if, by any chance, you shared my feelings?
Charlotte: Wow. Tell you what. Why don't we see how the summer goes, and you ask me again on my last night.
Tim: Your last night?
Charlotte: Yes. Try me on the last night. See what happens then, shall we? It's exciting.
Tim: Right. That's a perfect plan. That's absolutely perfect - last night.
Charlotte: Last night.
Tim: Thanks very much.
Charlotte: Night, night, Timmy.