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Quote by Kiran Manral

“Memories are fragile, you try to grab them and they skitter away in various directions. Trying to gather them together to write them out is difficult, they resist, get clouded and escape as wisps of smoke. Nothing seems as crystal clear as it once was, a milky film of opacity envelopes everything. Odd details stand out in one’s mind, not a continuum. A fragrance, an odour, the smell of toast burning perhaps or whiff of jasmine, a shade of pink, a flower pressed between the pages of a book, brings on a sharp burst of memories that drown you with their immediacy.”

Quote by Kiran Manral

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The Face At the Window

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Kiran Manral

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“We used to have this self-centred idea that Western democracies were the end-point of evolution, and we're dealing from a position of strength, and people are becoming like us. It's not that way. Because if you think this thing we have here isn't fragile you are kidding yourself. This, '- and here Jamison takes a breath and waves his hand around to denote Maida Vale, London, the whole of Western civilization, -'this is fragile.”

“I wonder if we would ever switch back to old photo albums we got printed from photography shops. A Kodak KB10 camera with 36 photos worth of film roll, waiting for it to complete before sending the photos for developing. Nothing was instant, it would sometimes take months to compete a film and weeks to get the prints. The joy of seeing the photos, the disappointment to find a ruined image due to shaky hands. Even after having lots of camera and GBs of memory cards will never bring the same feeling.”

“Aspetta un momento, oh, albero che stai scomparendo, perché i rami più bassi sono ancora scuri per me, per cui lasciami guardare ancora una volta! So che ci sono spazi vuoti tra i tuoi rami, sui quali gli occhi che ho amato hanno brillato e hanno sorriso; e da cui si sono accomiatati. Molto in alto, però, vedo colui che parla della figlia morta, e del figlio della vedova; e della bontà di Dio! Se il tempo dev' essere nascosto ai miei occhi, possa almeno io, ormai con la testa grigia, volgere ancora una volta verso quell'immagine il cuore di un fanciullo e la fiducia e la sicurezza di un bambino!”

“Nostalgia is my favorite emotion. It's like, you think you know how to deal with the passage of time, but nostalgia will prove you wrong. You'll press your face into an old sweatshirt, or you'll look at a familiar shade of paint on a front door, and you'll be reminded of all the time that got away from you. If you could live it all again, you'd take a long moment to look around, to examine knees against knees. Nostalgia puts you in this dangerous re-creation of something you can never have again. It's ruthless, and for the most part, inaccurate.”

“we’ll speak about two young men who found much happiness for a few weeks and lived the remainder of their lives dipping cotton swabs into that bowl of happiness, fearing they’d use it up, without daring to drink more than a thimbleful on ritual anniversaries.” But this thing that almost never was still beckons, I wanted to tell him. They can never undo it, never unwrite it, never unlive it, or relive it—it’s just stuck there like a vision of fireflies on a summer field toward evening that keeps saying, You could have had this instead. But going back is false. Moving ahead is false. Looking the other way is false. Trying to redress all that is false turns out to be just as false.”

“I wanted to tell him that the pool, the garden, the house, the tennis court, the orle of paradise, the whole place, would always be his ghost spot. Instead, I pointed upstairs to the French windows of his room. Your eyes are forever there, I wanted to say, trapped in the sheer curtains, staring out from my bedroom upstairs where no one sleeps these days. When there’s a breeze and they swell and I look up from down here or stand outside on the balcony, I’ll catch myself thinking that you’re in there, staring out from your world to my world, saying, as you did on that one night when I found you on the rock, I’ve been happy here. You’re thousands of miles away but no sooner do I look at this window than I’ll think of a bathing suit, a shirt thrown on on the fly, arms resting on the banister, and you’re suddenly there, lighting up your first cigarette of the day—twenty years ago today. For as long as the house stands, this will be your ghost spot—and mine too, I wanted to say.”