Quotes About Nostalgia

novels contained something inexpressibly delicious.

As we grow old, that twilight Would illuminate treasure In the fields of memory.

I can buy baseball cards to view an entire career on the back of a little square of cardboard. But nobody sells major league father cards with key statistics on the back ("Had a great season in 2005: set career highs in unforced expressions of affection and averaged 87 minutes of quality time per day.")

They didn't talk for a while. Johnson popped the top on the second beer, took a long swig, then tossed the nearly full can over his shoulder and down the hill. "Good-bye, old friend," he said. "I'll believe it a year from now," Virgil said. Johnson: "Say, this whole stop-drinking thing . . . it doesn't include margaritas, does it?" —

GRAY-EYED COLE SAT in his bedroom window, looking out over the road, a scoped Ruger 10/22 in his hands. Squirrel rifle. Below him, a quilt hung on the wire clothesline, airing out. Before the end of the day, the quilt would smell like early-summer fields, with a little gravel dust mixed in. A wonderful smell, a smell like home.

most old farmhouses were built like that.

out of a jukebox

Sunday morning, coming down.

For breezes remind me of kisses. And kisses can be eternal.

So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.

I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers.

He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless.

The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space has ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, traveling to Honolulu.

It's a thing to see when a boy comes home.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, endlessly traveling to Honolulu.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased

My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.