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Quote by Michelle Obama

“I felt Nairobi's foreignness — or really, my own foreignness in relation to it — immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.”

Book:Becoming

Work

Becoming

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Author

Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama, the former First Lady of the United States, was born on January 17, 1964. She is known for her elegant image, active social engagement, and commitment to education. During her time in the White House, she focused on children's health and nutrition issues, promoting a series of social reforms. more

“The phone was laid on a desk thousands of miles away. Once more, with that clear familiarity, the footsteps, the pause, and, at last, the raising of the window. "Listen," whispered the old man to himself. And he heard a thousand people in another sunlight, and the faint, tinkling music of an organ grinder playing "La Marimba"— oh, a lovely, dancing tune. With eyes tight, the old man put up his hand as if to click pictures of an old cathedral, and his body was heavier with flesh, younger, and he felt the hot pavement underfoot. He wanted to say, "You're still there, aren't you? All of: you people in that city in the time of the early siesta, the shops closing, the little boys crying loteria nacional para hoy! to sell lottery tickets. You are all there, the people in the city. I can't believe I was ever among you. When you are away I: from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a ' quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living . . .”

Time Memory Nostalgia Phone

Book:Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“Here’s the truth of nostalgia: we don’t feel it for who we were but who we weren’t, we feel it for all the possibilities that were open to us but that we didn’t take. Time is like wax dripping from a candle flame. In the moment it is molten and falling with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be; it becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. It is impossible no matter how blessed you are by luck or the government or some remote invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind, it is impossible not to feel a little sad looking at that bit of wax; that bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take.”

Nostalgia

Book:Mostly Void, Partially Stars

Source: Mostly Void, Partially Stars

“The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become With their dear retrospect.”

Death Poetry Hope Loss Grief Poem Nostalgia

Author:Emily Dickinson

“Zwischen Immer und Nie, for you in silence, somewhere in Italy in the mid-eighties.”