100 Quotes About Nostalgium

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It can make us feel warm and fuzzy inside, smile at old memories, and laugh out loud at the goofy stuff that happened to us in the past. While most of us are busy trying to prevent it from happening, most people are actually doing everything they can to keep their nostalgia alive. For example, many people are nostalgic for their childhoods Read more

Others are nostalgic about their first loves. Still others yearn for the good old days of simpler times and simpler tastes. Here we've collected some of our favorite nostalgia quotes to inspire you today!

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train...
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Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you. Jonathan Safran Foer
There comes a time in your life when you have...
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There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. Shannon L. Alder
Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise.
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Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise. Aaron BenZeev
How sad and bad and mad it was - but...
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How sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet Robert Browning
Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.
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Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space. Orhan Pamuk
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Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one. Ann Druyan
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His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless. Ernest Hemingway
Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land,...
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Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring. Vladimir Nabokov
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The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with – nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life. Rob Sheffield
There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual...
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There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves. Joe L. Wheeler
But in that moment I understood what they say about...
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But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward. John Corey Whaley
Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.
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Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home. Novalis
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Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve? Julian Barnes
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It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. W. Somerset Maugham
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The nostalgia of a moment's love can be an illusionary precipice from which we fall from truth; in heartbreak, what we escape to in the past is what tortures us in the present. Mike Norton
The thing about memories wasn't that many of them inevitably...
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The thing about memories wasn't that many of them inevitably faded, but that repeated recall of the ones you remembered burnished them into shining, gorgeous lies Dexter Palmer
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Between the MileI have always counted the miles. Sometimes they came quick, Other times slow. The distance between things, The way I could know. Close could feel far, And far could feel near. The miles that passed too quickly, The ones I ran out of fear. They weren’t all the same, So I had been told, The unmarked trails, And the days I was bold. Some miles went down, Spiraling so low, When I was afraid to look forward, There was nowhere to go. The sunset came fast, And the day turned to night, But the trails could be endless, If I looked at them right. Everything I knew, All I was told, The conversations left behind, The people who grew old. When the miles stretched out before me, I wanted to sew them at the seam, Looking forward and then back, Holding everything in between. . Jacqueline Simon Gunn
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There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook. David Benioff
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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
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Nos-tal-gic, ’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic.’ ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.’‘ Really, old fellow?’‘ Important. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.’ He fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.‘ Akira, ’ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. ‘We should move on. We have much to do. . Kazuo Ishiguro
I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest...
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I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people. Willa Cather
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That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I'm happy in retrospect. Maria Semple
There are many forms of love as there is moments...
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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 L. Alder
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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
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S father's words. But they are as empty on his lips as they feel in my ears. This was has taken everything from him. I see in his eyes how broken he is. how terribly hard he is trying to be his father's son. If he could, he would choose to be back by the campfire we made in the highlands of the Institute. He would return to the days of glory when life was simple, when friends seemed true. But wishing for the past doesn't clean the blood from either of our hands. Pierce Brown
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You can miss places. You can miss people. Just know that what you’re really missing is the way things were. And even if you could go there again…. see them again…. you can’t go back. They’re not the same. You’re not the same. The loss of them changed you. Ranata Suzuki
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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
For it is up to you and meto take solacein...
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For it is up to you and meto take solacein nostalgia's armsand our abilityto create the everlastingfrom fleeting moments. Sanober Khan
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The campus, an academy of trees, under which some hand, the wind's I guess, had scattered the pale lightof thousands of spring beauties, petals stained with pink veins;secret, blooming for themselves. We sat among them. Your long fingers, thin body, and long bones of improbable genius;some scattered gene as Kafka must have had. Your deep voice, this passing dust of miracles. That simple that was myself, half conscious, as though each moment was a pagewhere words appeared; the bent hammer of the typestruck against the moving ribbon. The light air, the restless leaves;the ripple of time warped by our longing. There, as if we were paintedby some unknown impressionist. . Ruth Stone
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Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, andone would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by thehigh, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, somany and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like firefliesin the perfumed heat of summer night. Mark Strand
How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at...
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How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting. Graham Swift
Many contemporary critics of higher education similarly posit a Golden...
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Many contemporary critics of higher education similarly posit a Golden Age but no one knows when it was supposed to exist. Mark C. Carnes
College was at the heart of his sentimental imagination.
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College was at the heart of his sentimental imagination. Rick Perlstein
Nostalgia is the only acceptable form of sadness.
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Nostalgia is the only acceptable form of sadness. Will Advise
It's good to have things done withwhen they don't workit's...
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It's good to have things done withwhen they don't workit's also good not to hateor even forgetthe person you've failed with. Charles Bukowski
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Between the MilesI have always counted the miles. Sometimes they came quick, Other times slow. The distance between things, The way I could know. Close could feel far, And far could feel near. The miles that passed too quickly, The ones I ran out of fear. They weren’t all the same, So I had been told, The unmarked trails, And the days I was bold. Some miles went down, Spiraling so low, When I was afraid to look forward, There was nowhere to go. The sunset came fast, And the day turned to night, But the trails could be endless, If I looked at them right. Everything I knew, All I was told, The conversations left behind, The people who grew old. When the miles stretched out before me, I wanted to sew them at the seam, Looking forward and then back, Holding everything in between. . Jacqueline Simon Gunn
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There is nothing more agonising than the memory of good times when you are going through a difficult period in life. Life moves in only one direction - forward, but the memoirs of years gone by keep on haunting one’s soul till the time one is alive. Nostalgia can be more painful than a surgeon’s knife. Anurag Shourie
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Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure. R.A. Salvatore
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For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don’t feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say ‘When I grow up, ’ there is always an edge of disbelief–how could they ever be other than what they are? Ian Mcewan
Any time gone by was better.
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Any time gone by was better. Jorge Manrique
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He no longer loves the person whom he loved ten years ago. I quite believe it. She is no longer the same, nor is he. He was young, and she also; she is quite different. He would perhaps love her yet, if she were what she was then. Blaise Pascal
I can't look at everything hard enough!
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I can't look at everything hard enough! Thornton Wilder
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Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner. E.a. Bucchianeri
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I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. Diane Setterfield
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Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit--some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures. Loren Eiseley
The mid-19th century was noted for a partisan, rather than...
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The mid-19th century was noted for a partisan, rather than a consensus press, but this partisanship was able to turn out voters consistently. Harold Holzer
Somewhere between buying 25 friendship bands and passing by the...
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Somewhere between buying 25 friendship bands and passing by the shop with a smile looking at kids buying the bands, we grew up Anamika Mishra
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Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker, ' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated! Charles Dickens
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The dreams of childhood–its airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed-in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering the little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world . Charles Dickens
I visit you in my dreams and you talk to...
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I visit you in my dreams and you talk to me in songs. Each sentence is a bridge taking me closer to the city that you are. Maria Elena
Country life has its advantages, ' he used to say....
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Country life has its advantages, ' he used to say. 'You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good.. . and there are gooseberries. Anton Chekhov
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Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm, " is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution. Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts murder and violence. Albert Camus
I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my...
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I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks. Groucho Marx
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Sara, " I ask finally, "what do you want from me?"" I want to look at you and remember what it used to be like, " she says thickly. "I want to go back, Brian. I want you to take me back." But she is not the woman I used to know, the woman who traveled a countryside counting prairie dog holes, who read aloud the classifieds of lonely cowboys seeking women and told me, in the darkest crease of the night, that she would love me until the moon lost its footing in the sky. To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her. Jodi Picoult
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Alecto, have you noticed how downhill this little island is becoming?” Mandy questioned sadly. “All these organic food stores and yoga studios and cellular phone towers… Cape Breton was one of the only places left where it still had that nostalgic small town atmosphere but now… I’ve only been away for a year, how could things have changed so quickly? I mean, how can the world accept it?”“ C'est la vie, ” said Alecto, looking extremely tired as he stared out the window at the late November maple keys fluttering down from vibrantly red trees lining the streets on either side of the windshield. Rebecca McNutt
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The courtyard kept changing, dazzling her with the flowers that bloomed between one day and the next, with the bare branches of trees that were swollen with the buds of new leaves and then fuzzed with green. Every day, she drove a familiar road through a new place. Anne Bishop
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Nobody has ever taken a photograph of something they want to forget. We can build a wall of happy Kodak moments around ourselves, a wall of our Christmases, birthdays, baby showers and weddings, but we can never forget that celluloid film is see-through, that behind it, all the misery of real life waits for our wall to collapse someday. Rebecca McNutt
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You'll live through my words and my pictures, and I'll live somewhere the skies are blue. Maria Elena
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I love the smell of old books, ” Mandy sighed, inhaling deeply with the book pressed against her face. The yellow pages smelled of wood and paper mills and mothballs. Rebecca McNutt
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Conversations were struck up between strangers, regular diners as well as infrequent customers, as if united by a sense of gratitude at the sheer unlikeliness of it all - a high achievement of industrial civilisation that deserved to remain for everyone, but which has now gone the way of the airship and the ocean liner. Much of the nostalgia concerning railways is partial, even false; not this.[ On British railway dining cars] . Simon Bradley
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Men always praise antiquity and fault the present, although not always reasonably, and they are partisans of things past such that not only do they celebrate those ages that they know from what historians have preserved of them, but also those that as old men they recall having seen in their youth. And if this opinion of theirs is false, as it is most of the time, I am persuaded that there are various causes that lead them into this deception. Unknown
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I felt a tightening in my chest, a sharp spike of intense sadness-almost like nostalgia, except it was for a life I never had. Katie Alender
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I miss those days even though I wasn't alive. Sherry Turkle
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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. . Virginia Woolf
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This Heart at Peace is My Homeland. (Su Shih) Sung Yee Poon
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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
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Nostalgia can be more painful than a surgeon's knife. Anurag Shourie
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This empty shell holds nothing but the echoes of what was. Jenim Dibie
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..her own restless coveting of his love and the slow but sure ebullience of her desire for him; then the Nawab's martydom and her spiritual homelessness and physical loneliness; there was so much, so many portraits and landscapes, like the bright pages of an album of words and pictures. They filled her heart overflowing with the tangy, coppery taste of blood that flows from failure, and pricked her soul with nostalgia, for what was and what could have been. She had never thought that happy memories could come accompanied with so much regret, so much pain, so much repining, and discontent. If you plucked a rose without due care, its thorn pricked you to protest the thoughtlessness and the inconsiderateness you had displayed in taking away its crowning glory. Here, it was nothing else but the rose which was the thorn: its each and every petal was saturated with the scents of the past but it stung like the scorpion plant. But was it possible not to touch those memories? For their scents traveled in and out of your being like breath, and their colours were inside every blink of your eye. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
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I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps. Rob Sheffield
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This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations. Joseph Conrad
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He's rigged a tiny cassette player with a small set of foam earphones to listen to demo tapes and rough mixes. Occasionally he'll hand the device to Mindy, wanting her opinion, and each time, the experience of music pouring directly against her eardrums - hers alone - is a shock that makes her eyes well up; the privacy of it, the way it transforms her surroundings into a golden montage, as if she were looking back on this lark in Africa with Lou from some distant future. Jennifer Egan
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Over-familiar, the music has become a kind of audio- Valium, background music rather than something I listen to actively and attentively. A gin and tonic after a long day. A shame, I think, because while each note remains the same, I used to hear them differently. It used to sound better. David Nicholls
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This empty kitchen's where I'd while away the hours Just next to my old chair You'd usually have some flowers The shelves of books Even the picture hooks Everything is gone But my heart is hanging on If this old neighborhood Survived us both alright Don't know that it withstood All the things that took our light You on the stair I can see you there Everything is gone But my heart is hanging on Once there was a little girl Used to wonder what she would be Went out into the big wide world Now she's just a memory There used to be a little school here Where I learned to write my name But time has been a little cruel here Time has no shame It's just a place where We used to live It's just a place where We used to live Now in another town You lead another life And now upstairs and down You're someone else's wife Here in the dust There's not a trace of us Everything is gone But my heart is hanging on It's just a place where We used to live It's just a place where We used to live. Mark Knopfler
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Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after… you know… after the funeral we haven’t had the money for any of your weird little games and I was hoping you’d be more mature now that Jud’s gone, ” her father had disappointedly added. “How much’d that cake cost you?”“ It’s paid for, ” Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. “I used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy’s last year and I… it was my birthday, dad! ”“ You can’t even be normal about this one thing, can you?” her father had complained. Mandy hadn’t cried, she’d only stared back knowingly, her voice shaky. “…I’m normal. Rebecca McNutt
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I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles lived But there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together. Unknown
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Once a thing is removed from your heart, a trace of it still remains. Will Advise
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I'm chasing a decade old ghost. Searching beneath the rafters of a cobweb-filled haven lined with old memories which my brain cannot accept are dead. The light of nostalgia is burning bright inside my heart. Ignoring the emptiness around me, and hoping for a resurrection of love. LeAnne Mechelle
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I am filled time and againwith a heart-aching wonder when I thinkof the fireand frost of memoriesof the everlastingnessof lovethe solace of familyand the power of prayer. Sanober Khan
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Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan–punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish. Terri Windling
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Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past. Shannon L. Alder
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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
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The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue. John Irving
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People say that a time machine can’t be invented, but they’ve already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world’s first time machines. Rebecca McNutt
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We always knewthat good times camewith termination contractseven if we weren't quite readyto sign it. Sanober Khan
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They think I’m not entirely ‘grounded in reality’, they say. They want me to go to some live-in nerdy activity ranch thing for troubled Canadian youth, that one out in Ontario where you come back programmed like some robot, dressed in a tye-dyed shirt and eating tuna sandwiches, ” Mandy explained, a horrified look on her face. “You’re eighteen, not twelve! Would they really send you to some rat’s nest like that?” Wendy questioned in mock horror. “Aw hell no, if you get sent there, they’ll make you hold hands and sing songs about caring! And they’ll force you to recycle everything in blue canisters, and to discuss your emotions in front of groups of bratty little dopes! ”“ Dear god, they’ll have geeky youth wiener roasts at night, and no locks on the doors! ” Mandy added, eyes wide. “…It’ll be the day pigs fly, my parents have the camp brochure on the fridge but they’ll never go through with sending me there. They always forget. Rebecca McNutt
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A picture's worth a thousand words. But a single word can make you think of over a thousand pictures in your mind, over a thousand moments, a thousand memories. Rebecca McNutt
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In her eyes was the reflection of everything that mattered: old diners with neon signs, vinyl records, celluloid film, drive-in movies, Pears soap, department stores, her brother’s old blue Camaro car and the smell of coal dust in the rainy sky of a summer lightning storm.… And all the nice bright colors of the past that she thought were gone for good came flowing back into her life like a wave of nostalgia flooding over her, reds, yellows, blues and greens drenching her gray memories in psychedelic ribbons and glittering fireworks.… She hoped that the world would always hold those miniscule yet beautiful, deep and mysterious traces of memory. Rebecca McNutt
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How promising today's generation is. They can whip out their cellular phones like sheep, instantly take a million digital photos of their cat and then just delete them. But I'd like to see these kids try to artfully use a traditional film camera or make a super 8 home movie. Traditional film takes integrity, nostalgia, effort, patience and imagination - things that the 21st century has very little of. Everything these days, even a superior medium like film photography with an extensively vivid history and an iconic meaning, is becoming disposable in this age. Rebecca McNutt
90
…Maybe I’ll be watching super-8 home videos, ” Alecto told her, smiling bleakly. “I love my super-8 camera, it’s an Eastman Kodak one… Kodak stopped manufacturing them, the world went digital and now Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film and all kinds of traditional film products… it’s sad.” “Well, uh… well, have fun watching your home movies then, ” Mandy finished, but she didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Rebecca McNutt
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It's the problem in seeing too much of the world. In loving too much of it. You can only live in one place at a time. And eventually, you pick your spot, and the memories of all the others just become ghosts. Daniel Abraham
92
That’s why all of those records from high school sound so good. It’s. It that the songs were better- it’s that we were listening to them with our friends, drunk for the first time on liqueurs, touching sweaty palms, staring for hours at a poster on the wall, not grossed out by carpet or dirt or crumpled, oily bedsheets. These songs and albums were the best ones because of how huge adolescence felt then, and how nostalgia recasts it now. Nostalgia is so certain: the sense of familiarity it instills makes us feel like we know ourselves, like we’ve lived. To get a sense that we have already journeyed through something- survived it, experienced it- is often so much easier and less messy than the task of currently living though something. Though hard to grasp, nostalgia is elating to bask in- temporarily restoring color to the past. It creates a sense memory that momentarily simulates context. Nostalgia is recall without the criticism of the present day, all the good parts, memory without the pain. Finally, nostalgia asks so little of us, just to be noticed and revisited; it doesn’t require the difficult task of negotiation, the heartache and uncertainty that the present does. . Carrie Brownstein
93
I remember things like dates down to minutes, what they smelled like, how they walked and how they tug their hands in their pockets. I twine myself in nostalgia of moments and not necessarily the people in them. I long for the idea of the past and occasionally forget the present. I find myself lost in memories, just looking to recreate the moment; forgetting the past is in the past and what we have is now. . Dominic Riccitello
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Three children lay on the rocks at the water's edge. A dark-haired girl, two boys, slightly older. This image is caught forever in my memory, like some fragile creature preserved in amber. Juliet Marillier
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Growing up, I always had a soldier mentality. As a kid I wanted to be a soldier, a fighter pilot, a covert agent, professions that require a great deal of bravery and risk and putting oneself in grave danger in order to complete the mission. Even though I did not become all those things, and unless my predisposition, in its youngest years, already had me leaning towards them, the interest that was there still shaped my philosophies. To this day I honor risk and sacrifice for the good of others - my views on life and love are heavily influenced by this. . Criss Jami
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You. You are the last page of hundred pages I have written in my journal. Filling its pages with special kind of spoken words without a sound, and the I Love You that's been written and rewritten countless times. After all this time that I spent writing about you in my journals, can you still not understand? Only you can fill this quietness and emptiness, only you can take this grief away, isn't it obvious? Who else will save your soul and mine? God knows, it is you that will heal the holes and cracks of times. . Mookhatchka Khalid
97
Nostalgia is an illness for those who haven't realized that todayis tomorrow's nostalgia. Zeena Schreck
98
The memories: they are the reality. Stephen King
99
In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion for the actual, he always praised the past and what had never existed; and even the classical languages which he taught were in reality for him goloshes and umbrellas in which he sheltered himself from real life. Anton Chekhov
100
I couldn't understand how boldness and sorrow, how you're so hard and do you really care for me? could be so thoroughly bound together. Nor could I begin to fathom how someone so seemingly vulnerable, hesitant, and eager to confide so many uncertainties about herself could, with one and the same gesture, reach into my pants with unabashed recklessness and hold on to my cock and squeeze it. Unknown