Nostalgia Quotes

“That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real.”
― Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.”
― T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations

“Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn't
actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your
mind?”
― Jenny Lawson

“I never felt so large and important as I did when being in love was everything. I saw you walking a foot above the earth and I remembered that was where I used to walk.”
― Scott Spencer, Endless Love

“Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress

“Am mai văzut fotografii de-ale ei de cînd era doar o adolescentă. Toate mi s-au părut cu neputinţă de suportat, ca şi cînd ai vrea să ţii mîna pe un fier înroşit. Nici nu ştia că exişti cînd şi le-a făcut, iar faptul că ai pierdut momente atît de preţioase din viaţa ei că a risipit atîta emoţie pentru altcineva decît pentru tine, chiar dacă pentru nimeni, este de neînţeles, de
netrăit.”
― Mircea Cărtărescu, Nostalgia

“We do not disappear without a trace. We leave a wake that never quite disappears, a gash in time that we so laboriously leave behind us.”
― Lars Saabye Christensen, The Half Brother

“Ever poised on that cusp between past and future, we tie memories to souvenirs like string to trees along life’s path, marking the trail in case we lose ourselves around a bend of tomorrow’s road.”
― Susan Lendroth

“...quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perché la persona assente si è trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non è immaginario. Così è a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perché è reale.”
― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep

“She had forgotten his faults as we forget
the sorrows of our departed childhood.”
― George Eliot, Adam Bede

“She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the old days, all set to do its little magic.”
― Richard Ford, Canada

“Despite your best efforts and intentions, there's a limited reservoir to fellowship before you begin to rely solely on the vapors of nostalgia. Eventually, you move on, latch on to another group of friends. Once in a while, though, you remember something, a remark or a gesture, and it takes you back. You think how close all of you were, the laughs and commiserations, the fondness and affection and support. You recall the parties, the trips, the dinners and late, late nights. Even the arguments and small betrayals have a revisionist charm in retrospect. You're astonished and enlivened by the memories. You wonder why and how it ever stopped. You have the urge to pick up the phone, fire off an email, suggesting reunion, resumption, and you start to act, but then don't, because it would be awkward talking after such a long lag, and, really, what would be the point? Your lives are different now. Whatever was there before is gone. And it saddens you, it makes you feel old and vanquished--not only over this group that disbanded, but also over all the others before and after it, the friends you had in grade and high school, in college, in your twenties and thirties, your kinship to them (never mind to all your old lovers) ephemeral and, quite possibly, illusory to begin with.”
― Don Lee, The Collective

“I am sick of old ghosts and I just want to feel safe again without the haunts of old vulnerabilities.”
― Donna Lynn Hope, Willow

“Above all, staring at my old bedroom ceiling, I feel safe. Cocooned from the world; wrapped up in cotton wool. No one can get me here. No one even knows I'm here. I won't get any nasty letters and I won't get any nasty phone calls and I won't get any nasty visitors. It's like a sanctuary. I feel as if I'm fifteen again, with nothing to worry about but my Homework. (And I haven't even got any of that.)”
― Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic

“...TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned.”
― Pete Hautman, Libraries of Minnesota

“Din splendorile cafelei de odineoară, neschimbat rămăsese doar mangalul.”
― Naguib Mahfouz, Palace of Desire

“Nostalgia por saber que muito provavelmente nunca mais regressaria ali. Esta constatação confrontava-me com os limites da minha própria existência, com aquilo que não terei tempo de fazer ou voltar a fazer ao longo do resto da minha vida.”
― José Luís Peixoto, Dentro do Segredo

“The age of recording is necessarily an age of nostalgia--when was the past so hauntingly accessible?--but its bitterest insight is the incapacity of even the most perfectly captured sound to restore the moment of its first inscribing. That world is no longer there.”
― Geoffrey O'Brien, Sonata for Jukebox: An Autobiography of My Ears

“Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin. It is largely because of the books, films and reminiscences that have come between that the war of 1914-18 is now supposed to have had some tremendous, epic quality that the present one lacks.”
― George Orwell

“...and should I die in her care, I would leave smiling because, I will linger in the hills beside her...”
― Kellie Elmore, Magic in the Backyard

“Toate mi s-au părut
cu neputinţă de suportat, ca şi cînd ai vrea să ţii mîna pe un fier înroşit.
Nici nu ştia că exişti cînd şi le-a făcut, iar faptul că ai pierdut momente
atît de preţioase din viaţa ei că a risipit atîta emoţie pentru altcineva
decît pentru tine, chiar dacă pentru nimeni, este de neînţeles, de
netrăit.”
― Mircea Cărtărescu, Nostalgia

“Más o menos cada diez años echo una mirada hacia el pasado y puedo ver el mapa de mi viaje, si es que eso
puede llamarse un mapa; parece más bien un plato de tallarines. Si uno vive lo suficiente y mira para atrás, es obvio que no hacemos más que andar en círculos.”
― Isabel Allende, My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile

“NOSTALGI = TRANSENDENSI

Nostalgi sama dengan transendensi
betul, ini permainan kata
lagi-lagi kata asing
tapi apa sih yang tidak asing
tapi itu hanya ilusi
kembali pada nostalgi
berarti kehilangan
yang dulu-dulu dibayangkan
hanya tidak mencekam lagi, karena
lembut dengan ironi

saat kini yang berkilas balik
siapa tahu nanti …
kini — dulu — nanti, teratasi
bukankah itu transendensi?”
― Toeti Heraty, Nostalgi = Transendensi

“NW" is full of split selves, people alienated from the very things they thought defined them. Their nostalgia -- for old movies, old songs, buses they don't ride anymore -- is less a salve than a form of pain.”
― Christian Lorentzen

“Uma vez eu conheci uma garota, ela guardava neve na geladeira para não estragar.”
― Filipe Russo, Caro Jovem Adulto

“Gonzaga was the kind of place you’d not even think about loving until you’d left it for a couple of years.”
― Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir

“How did he get here? What drew him back? Easy answer: the monkey bars. Not-so-easy answer. . . . What took him away in the first place? Gyroscopic deflections are only partly to blame. Who can stop a revolving planet? Who can predict where on the table a spinning quarter will fall flat?”
― Jay Nichols, Monkey Bars

“Refratado por lágrimas eu ouço cada nostalgia, agasalhado por aplausos eu visto apenas celebração, atormentado por paixões eu conjulgo toda profecia.”
― Filipe Russo, Caro Jovem Adulto

“And before me the empty table at the Theater Café with my reservation - Barnum Nilsen, 8PM - the only table no one sits at. And this too is an echo, an echo of time, the shadows of a discus spinning through blinding sunlight.”
― Lars Saabye Christensen, The Half Brother

“Madre mía, cuántos castillos en el aire hacíamos, escribió Micha más tarde. La situación habría podido seguir así enternamente. Era como para vomitar sin pausa, pero nosotros nos divertíamos a lo grande. Éramos todos tan listos, tan leídos, teníamos tanto interés..., pero el resultado era estúpido. Nos precipitábamos hacia el futuro, pero éramos tan del pasado... Dios mío, qué ridículos éramos, y ni siquiera nos dábamos cuenta.”
― Thomas Brussig, Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee