Quotes About Nostalgia

There was always talk of Koreans going back home, but in a way, all of them had lost the home in their minds for good.

all of them had lost the home in their minds for good.

Yoseb was almost unrecognizable from the boy she had loved from girlhood. He had become this cynical, broken man—something she could never have predicted. So it was only at the restaurant that Kyunghee behaved like herself. Here, she teased Kim like a younger brother and giggled with Sunja while they cooked. Now, even this place would be gone.

She longed to see her sons as they were back then: their legs chubby and white, their mushroom haircuts misshapen because they could never sit still at the barber. She wished she could take back the times she had scolded her children just because she was tired. There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.

There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa's small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet, grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.

The chorus of "Jack and Diane" is: Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. Are you kidding me? The thrill of living was high school? Come on, Mr. Cougar Mellencamp. Get a life.

the best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.

Until I realized: this long expanse of free time to rekindle friendships is not real. We will never come home to each other again and we will never again have each other's undivided attention. That version of our friendship is over forever. And when I remember this, and it usually happens in those awful, quiet evening hours on Sunday nights, after dinner but before bed, I just lie on my sofa and cry for half an hour.

Albums that remind me of my childhood happiness make me incredibly sad now.

With my friends, the sad truth is that our best "best friend" days are behind us. In college, we used to be able to meet each other in the common area of our off-campus housing, excited about our evening ahead, which consisted of someone making an enormous tureen of pasta and drinking wine from a box while we took turns regaling each other with details of our terrible love lives.

In high school, I had fun in my academic clubs, watching movies with my girlfriends, learning Latin, having long, protracted, unrequited crushes on older guys who didn't know me, and yes, hanging out with my family. I liked hanging out with my family! Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it.

I've always loved clothes. Like any normal woman, I would see a dress, buy it, rip the tags off with my teeth, save the buttons for ten to twelve years in a drawer, and wear it to work.

It's sort of my go-to stock image of my childhood, actually. I think it has something to do with knowing I'll never be able to go back to that time that makes me cry every time I listen to it.

It's one of those songs— like Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven"— that everyone knows all the words to without ever having chosen to learn them.

And as everyone knows, the best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.

B.J. and I watched Lost on his portable DVD player, which is just about the most 2007 thing you can do.

Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it.

With no music to listen to, I just biked around in circles talking to myself like a kid on the cover of a Robert Cormier young adult novel,

but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life.

Sovint, de nit, em desvetlla l'enyor i faig recompte, ingenu i greu, de tantes afinitats perdudes, dels propòsits desats en un calaix per no fer nosa.

It's sad and beautiful how a few hours can come to stand for the many others that never were. One looks back and holds up a handful of hours to prove, "That was what it was, it was so perfect," in spite of what one knows, in spite of all the other days that came before and after.

Now, I looked across the Plattsburgh train depot and swelled with indulgent love at Ev's grumpy scowl.

each of us humans has a moment-if not many-in which we lapse. for some, the transgression involves sex. for others, simply doubt or a rage so all encompassing, it impels us to make irreversible decisions. but whatever the transgression is doesn't really matter. what matters is that lapsing is our fate. we humans are doomed to it. worse, it is our destiny to look back longingly, with nostalgia, at our world before we changed, at who we were Before. we can never forget. but we can never go back.

Your sentimentality softens all the edges, you're misremembering. Take a moment to recall it as it really was: fucking hell.