Nostalgia
Quotes - I wish I could sing
“When
people talk about the good old days, I say to people, 'It's not the days that
are old, it's you that's old.' I hate the good old days. What is important is
that today is good.”
―
Karl Lagerfeld
“The
'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it.
There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.”
―
Lenny Bruce
“This
is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort
upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being
ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets
and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's
someone who wants to take care of you.”
―
Franny Billingsley, Chime
“I
know what it feels like, and it sucks, it really does, when you are up in the
middle of the night thinking about the things that you've suddenly became aware
of. The things you're missing out on right now, and all the people who are not
close to you anymore, and all of the good times that will never happen again,
and all the people who have meant the world to you who have forgotten about you
forever, and you get this awful feeling that's kind of like a mix between
loneliness and nostalgia.”
―
Abraham M. Alghanem, Summer and Autumn
“For
an instant I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave which
had been frozen in front of me, held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor.”
―
Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
“There
are many forms of love as there is moments in time, and you are capable of
feeling them all at different stages of your life.”
―
Shannon Alder
“Each
night I lie down in a graveyard of memories.”
―
Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl
“I'm
your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more.”
―
Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
“The
aching in my chest
isn't
because I miss you,
it's
realizing that you have
become
someone I no longer know,
your
fears, your 4 am thoughts,
your
achievements,
are
things I no longer have an equivalent to.
Who
we were and who we are
are
four different people,
and
the me from now
doesn't
relate to the me from then,
let
alone to the you from now.
-Tanzy
Sayadi and Jarod Kintz”
―
Tanzy Sayadi, liQUID PROse QUOtes
“The
feeling of that moment defined earthly rapture for James Ed. Before his state
of mind could enjoy a full minute of the ultimate feeling, the six-year-old
memory intervened. “Goddamn that memory!” he thought.”
―
Shafter Bailey, James Ed Hoskins and the One-Room Schoolhouse: The Unprosecuted
Crime Against Children
“From
an evolutionary point of view, most emotions - fear, desire, anger - serve some
practical purpose, but nostalgia is a useless, futile thing because it is a
longing for something that is permanently lost . . . .”
―
David Nicholls, Us
“The
Pond"
August
of another summer, and once again
I
am drinking the sun
and
the lilies again are spread across the water.
I
know now what they want is to touch each other.
I
have not been here for many years
during
which time I kept living my life.
Like
the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could
sing,
I
wish I could sing.
A
little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This
is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All
my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except
whatever was not happiness,
which
I also remember.
Each
of us wears a shadow.
But
just now it is summer again
and
I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then
slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close,
close to one another,
Soon
now, I'll turn and start for home.
And
who knows, maybe I'll be singing.”
―
Mary Oliver, Felicity
“Memories
sharpen the past; it is reality that decays.”
―
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
“I
became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have
reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns
on you that when he went he took some of you with him.”
―
Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
“I
was right when I said I’d never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your
heart till you can’t ever do anything else except look back.”
―
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
“We
seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think
yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you
not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on
nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a
time.”
―
Art Buchwald
“She
could sense it very clearly: for me, no less than for her, the past counted far
more than the present, remembering something far more than possessing it.
Compared to memory, every possession can only ever seem disappointing, banal,
inadequate ... She understood me so well! My anxiety that the present
'immediately' turned into the past so that I could love it and dream about it
at leisure was just like hers, was identical. It was 'our' vice, this: to go
forwards with our heads forever turned back.”
―
Giorgio Bassani
“Nostalgia
has a way of blocking the reality of the past.”
―
Shannon L. Alder
“If
you are a dreamer, come in,
If
you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A
hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If
you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For
we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come
in!
Come
in!”
―
Shel Silverstein
“I
don't like being with grown-up people. I've known that a long time. I don't
like it because I don't know how to get on with them.”
―
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
