Quotes About Memories

The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

The girl who had known the weather and never been burnt by fireflies, the girl who had known what dandelions meant rubbed off on your chin. Then, she would be gone.

My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear.

There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.

And just holding her hand would be good. Can you understand that? Do you know that holding someone's hand can be `the' thing? Such a thing that your hands move while not moving. You can remember a thing like that, rather than any other thing about a night, all your life. Just holding hands can mean more, I believe it. When everything is repeated, and over, and familiar, it's the first things rather than the last that count.

Have a drink? I don't need it, said Halloway. But someone inside me does. Who? The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights. But he couldn't say that. So he drank, eyes shut, listening to hear if that thing inside turned over again, rustling in the deep bons that were stacked for burning but never burned.

Will walked silently to touch the iron rungs hidden under the rustling ivy. "Dad. You won't pull these off …?" Dad probed one with his fingers. "Some day, when you're tired of them, you'll take them off yourself." "I'll never be tired of them." "Is that how it seems? Yes, to someone your age, you figure you'll never get tired of anything. All right, son, up you go.

Faber sniffed the book. "Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy.

There is no cause for nostalgia save the good and life-enhancing nostalgia for the present.

Pipkin: an assemblage of speeds, smells, textures. A cross section of all the boys who ever ran, fell, got up, and ran again.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, . . .

yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies.

Take it where you can find it, in old photograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself.

Way late at night Will had heard—how often?—train whistles jetting steam along the rim of sleep, forlorn, alone and far, no matter how near they came. Sometimes he woke to find tears on his cheek, asked why, lay back, listened and thought, Yes! they make me cry, going east, going west, the trains of far gone in country deeps they drown in tides of sleep that escape the towns.

Sapete che i libri hanno un po'l'odore della noce moscata o di certe spezie d'origine esotica? Amavo annusarli, da ragazzo. Signore, quanti bei libri c'erano al mondo un tempo, prima che noi vi rinunciassimo!

No, said the old man, deep under. I don't remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War's never a winning things, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns. But I don't suppose that's the kind of victory you boys mean for me to talk on.

Some summers refuse to end.

C?rÈ›ile nu erau decât un fel de receptacul în care oamenii înmagazinau o mulÈ›ime de cunoÈ™tinÈ›e pe care se temeau c-ar putea s? le uite. Nu e nimic magic în c?rÈ›i; magic e doar ceea ce spun c?rÈ›ile È™i însuÈ™i faptul c? în ele peticele universului sunt îns?ilate într-un veÈ™mânt pe m?sura noastr?.

How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquito-lotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors.

Look," he tried, "put two men in a rail car, one a soldier, the other a farmer. One talks war, the other wheat; and bore each other to sleep. But let one spell long-distance running, and if the other once ran the mile, why, those men will run all night like boys, sparking a friendship up from memory. So, all men have one business in common: women, and can talk that till sunrise and beyond. Hell.

O kuo iš tikr?j? kvepia Laikas? Dulk?mis, laikrodžiais, žmon?mis.

Una vez, cuando él era niño, durante un corte de suministro eléctrico, su madre había encontrado y encendido la última vela que tenían; entonces se habían sentido muy próximos el uno del otro. Esa tenue iluminación había hecho que el espacio perdiese sus vastas dimensiones y se cerrase, envolvente, a su alrededor, madre e hijo, solo ellos, transformados, esperando que la electricidad no volviese quizá demasiado pronto.

He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

Better than putting things in the attic you never use again. This way, you get to live the summer over for a minute or two here or there along the way through the winter, and when the bottles are empty the summer's gone for good and no regrets and no sentimental trash lying about for you to stumble over forty years from now. Clean, smokeless, efficient, that's dandelion wine. (page 266 in the 1975 hardback)