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Nostalgia Quotes

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Nostalgia Quotes

“As she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her little sister’s dream. The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by—the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool—she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution—once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess’s knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it—once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard’s slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle. So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard—while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.”

“The mental Images were liquifying So I could no longer separate what I was recalling from the past from what I'd seen in detailed photos that afternoon. Like life. I've long suspected that many of my memories from childhood Are actually drawn from old pictures, That they are composed of snapshots, A mosaic of celluloids Images reworked into a remembered reality. Kodak cast backwards. Maybe it's better to recall The pass that way. We rarely take pictures of sad occasions.”

“devouring their dark lips, dark with wine and fleeting love, an ancient memory love had promised but finally never gave, until there were too many kisses to count or remember, and the memory of love proved not love at all and needed a replacement, which our bodies found, and then the giggles subsided, and the laughter dimmed, and darkness enfolded all of us and we gave away our childhood for nothing and we died”

“Christmas is not a reminder that the world is really quite a nice old place. It reminds us that the world is a shockingly bad old place, where wickedness flourishes unchecked, where children are murdered, where civilized countries make a lot of money by selling weapons to uncivilized ones so they can blow each other apart. Christmas is God lighting a candle, and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are. The light shines in the darkness, says St. John, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

“In this night-struck city I am guided and comforted by the memory of your light. I see you, I see you constantly, just as I first saw you, so beautiful as you spun in the rounds of the rebita, or in serious contemplation in Muxima, alone in the chapel, while outside the still river under the wide sun, the solemn landscape, the flawless sky, seemed in silence to be meditating with you. Then I see you crossing the Veados Beach at a gallop. I watch you laughing in the distance and your laugh is carried over to me in the breeze, salty and fresh, humid and strong, and again I feel —as I felt then— a living presence, the presence of Life.”

“In this night-struck city I am guided and comforted by the memory of your light. I see you, I see you constantly, just as I first saw you, so beautiful as you spun in the rounds of the rebita, or in serious contemplation in Muxima, alone in the chapel, while outside the still river under the wide sun, the solemn landscape, the flawless sky, seemed in silence to be meditating with you. Then I see you crossing the Veados Beach at a gallop. I watch you laughing in the distance and your laugh is carried over to me in the breeze, salty and fresh, humid and strong, and again I feel —as I fel then— a living presence, the presence of Life.”

“It partook ... of eternity ... there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.”

“The table between them is the size of an ocean. She smiles an impersonal smile and Hugo smiles back, just as impersonally. It stings. She thinks of the person she was when he knew her, when she, Hugo and August were a trio. She conjures an image of the three of them in winter jackets, boots, scarves and hats, with library books in tote bags and laptops weighing down messenger bags and backpacks, and she can picture their silhouettes so clearly it's as if they're shuffling past outside the window, somewhere in between the fluttering lights. Then they disappear, engulfed by the lights, the people they once were, dissolved.”

“What healthy religion is saying is that the real life is both now and later. You have to taste the Real first of all now. The constant pattern, however, is that most Christians either move both backwards (religion as nostalgia) or into the distant future (religion as carrot on the stick) and consistently avoid where everything really happens and matters—the present moment.”

“[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.”