Quotes About Memories

He saw now that you can't go home again--not ever. There was no road back.

You can't go home again.

Eugene watched the sun wane and redden on a rocky river, and on the painted rocks of Tennessee gorges: the enchanted river wound into his child's mind forever.

My dear, dear girl, he said gently as she tried to speak, we can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire--a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three cents worth of lime and iron--which we cannot get back.

The days will always be brighter because he existed. The nights will always be darker because he's gone. And no matter what anybody says about grief, and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.

Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way.

Once someone's dead you can't make them undead.

I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we remember.

It occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are.

You learn, finally, that you'll die, and so you try to hang on to your own life, that gentle, naive kid you used to be, but then after a while the sentiment takes over, and the sadness, because you know for a fact that you can't ever bring any of it back again. You just can't.

I am forever astonished at the longevity of childhood. How it never ends. How we are what we were. How turtles and engines and stolen kisses leave their jet trail across our gaping lives.

They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture

the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

They all carried ghosts.

Nostalgia—that's the basic sickness, and I never heard of a doctor who can cure it.

They told stories about Ted Lavender's supply of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn't feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was. There's a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders. They were waiting for Lavender's chopper, smoking the dead man's dope. The moral's pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your day every time. Cute, said Henry Dobbins. Mind blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains. They made themselves laugh.

My memories begin in a fragrant California backyard, when I was two years old. The yard remains, infinitely smaller than it once seemed but still heady with eucalyptus oil and sudden gusts of ocean air, just as it was in 1956.

I'd be happy just to go back to about 1990," said Scott quietly. "The way we all were then.

Yeah, there's some unlikely beasts in the world, and it's best to stay near the ones that you've bought drinks for.

Sometimes I miss you the way someone drowning remembers the air.

Timothy B. Tyson

You begin to arrange your research in bundles - letters - photos - telegrams. This is that last thing you see before you put on your overcoat: Robert and Rowena with Meg: Rowena seated astride the pony – Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: 'Look! You can see our breath!' And you can.

Master Stuart made his letters into paper darts and launched them page by page from the roof of the house-watching them descend and fade into the green ravine below...Some he saved to trade at school for other artifacts of war sent home by other elder brothers like his own-but only the letters mailed from France were worthy of this exchange. They had to have the smell of fire.