Quotes About Nostalgia

I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her.

I've been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don't get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn't even true at the time - love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions - and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives - then I plead guilty.

If you'll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn't experience 'the sixties' until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties--or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.

The past is something we can neither hold on to nor move entirely beyond.

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?

But you find yourself repeating, "They grow up so quickly, don't they?" when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.

How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like that piglet.

Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten?

Old love is a row of beach huts in November.

And this is how I would remember it all, if I could. But I can't.

But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.

Games are for childhood, and sometimes I think I lost my childhood young.

We're leaving, I told her one July afternoon. We? You and I? Where are we going, young Master Paul? Do you have your belongings tied up in a red-spotted handkerchief on a stick?

But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty . . . And if we're talking about strong feelings that will never come again, I suppose it's possible to be nostalgic about remembered pain as well as remembered pleasure. And that opens up the field, doesn't it?

most people didn't experience "the sixties" until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties—or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.

You find yourself repeating, They grow up so quickly, don't they? when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.

The other half wanted to say, I love you, come away with me, sit on my knee, I'll always remember you. You so full of your past, me so full of my future.

First love fixes a life for ever: this much I have discovered over the years.

So (and this would have happened earlier, but I am only remembering it now): I am visiting her one afternoon.

Se había imaginado que, en el mundo moderno, el tiempo y el lugar ya no eran importantes en las historias de amor. Al mirar atrás vio que habían desempeñado en la suya una función más grande de lo que había pensado. Había sucumbido a la antigua, continuada, indeleble ilusión: que de algún modo los amantes están fuera del tiempo.

Julian Barnes

How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so?

Es menos el recuerdo de un suceso que el recuerdo de una fotografía del suceso. Y hoy día, como hemos perdido altura, precisión, foco, ya no confiamos tanto en la fotografía como en otra época. Las viejas instantáneas de tiempos más felices parecen haberse vuelto menos primarias, menos fotografías de la vida misma y más fotografías de fotografías. O, dicho de otro modo, tu recuerdo de tu vida —tu vida anterior

Y lo mismo ocurre con nuestra vida: tan clara, tan segura, hasta que por una razón u otra —el globo se mueve, la nube se dispersa, el sol cambia de ángulo— la imagen se pierde para siempre, se torna accesible sólo al recuerdo, se convierte en anécdota.