Quotes About Nostalgia

My first trip to New York City, when I was seven, was a whirlwind of Macy's, the Empire State building, and club sandwiches at a diner. On a whim, my parents took us there for the day, and my strongest memory is a revolving doors. It seemed to me than that to enter anywhere in Manhattan, you had to step into one and spin.

I think beaches kind of get in your blood, and if you grow up near one you never feel quite right when you're away from it.

It was one of the best nights of my life.

Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

the Bobbsey Twins

And believe it or not, you look very much the way Mimi did when she was young." "I do?" I almost began to cry again.

Later, Mom found the pictures of Mimi. We compared pictures of Mimi at twelve to pictures of me at twelve. We could have been twins. That night, I slept with one of the pictures of Mimi under my pillow.

This, I thought, must be full of pictures of me. But it wasn't. Not exactly. It was full of pictures of Janine and me.

All I wanted was something normal, a day like last Tuesday when Mimi was still alive, which was less than a week ago. I wanted to walk to Stoneybrook Middle School with Mary Anne, open the side door, which we sometimes use because it's close to my locker, saunter through the halls, look for the other club members or maybe for Dorrie Wallingford or Ashley Wyeth or some other friend, and hope that a boy would notice my outfit and smile at me.

As much as I loved living in Stoneybrook, I wanted to move back to California. Permanently.

You don't have to love somebody to miss them. You get used to having them around, like a cat or a bird.

You think everyone will stay behind and do everything you did all over again, forever. You picture old geezers in jean jackets doing whip-its behind the plaza.

We are both from the same kind of towns. We both know the sound of swivel-head spray at midnight on a summer lawn. We both know the weak secrets of us.

We've got our first ad from the July 29, 1950, Benton County Democrat on display today down at our Wal-Mart Visitors Center. It's for the Grand Remodeling Sale of Walton's Five and Dime, promising a whole bunch of good stuff: free balloons for the kids, a dozen clothespins for nine cents, iced tea glasses for ten cents apiece. The folks turned out, and they kept coming. Although we called it Walton's Five and Dime, it was a Ben Franklin franchise

But the truth is, some of my fondest memories are of plain old everyday items that we sold a ton of by presenting nicely on endcaps (displays at the end of aisles)—or on tables out in action alley (the big horizontal aisle running across a store just behind the checkout counters). I guess real merchants are like real fishermen: we have a special place in our memories for a few of the big ones.

I'd get up early in the morning and milk the cows, Mother would prepare and bottle the milk, and I'd deliver it after football practice in the afternoons. We had ten or twelve customers, who paid ten cents a gallon. Best of all, Mother would skim the cream and make ice cream, and it's a wonder I wasn't known as Fat Sam Walton in those days from all the ice cream I ate.

Helen and I made it a point to take the whole family out and spend time traveling or camping together. Sometimes the kids thought of these trips as forced marches, but I think that time we spent together has had a lot to do with our close relationship as a family today. We have a lot of good memories of traveling all over the country, especially in this one fine old DeSoto station wagon.

I miss how things were familiar with him, even if it was the familiar feeling of being let down.

Everyone is looking up toward us, but I am looking back.

We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.

I have lived to a great age: Yet to look backward to the time of my youth, when I was not a stranger to the hopes and fears that now agitate you, what a short space does it seem to be!

This was the bottomless panic at the lost smooth cheek of childhood, at no longer being young.

Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 'Tis known that Thou and I were one, I'll think it but a fond conceit-- It cannot be that Thou art gone!

Because I liked having your head in my lap too much. Remember that?" "No.