Quotes About Nostalgia

Justine's childhood was dark and velvety and it smelled of dust.

Grilled cheese sandwiches were all he knew how to make. He fried them over high heat and they gave off a sharp, salty smell that Willa had learned to associate with their mother's absences—her sick headaches and her play rehearsals and the times she slammed out of the house.

When she grew up she was going to marry a man who came from a big, close, jolly family. He would get along with all of them—he'd be the same kind of man her father was

On weekends, she had once told us, she liked to go to Stebbins hardware and ask the gray-haired men who clerked there how to fix a sagging door, or what to do about a curling wallpaper seam. She really did need their advice, she said; but also, she found it a comfort. It took her back to the time when her father was alive.

How was it that she had never realized the power of the young back when she was young herself?

Oh, sounds were what brought the past alive most clearly!

Same for the photos on the facing page: two little girls crammed into an armchair with a puppy, and a baby whose vast bouffant christening gown seemed to be wearing him rather than the other way around. There were no captions. Once the subjects' identities must have seemed so obvious; it hadn't occurred to the album's creator that the time would come when no one alive remembered them.

The trouble with discarding bad memories was that evidently the good ones went with them

because a longtime family joke was how Pauline put so much stock in marking occasions with gifts. Pauline made a shooing gesture with one hand (people tended to exaggerate her character, she felt), and Karen went on. "Mom, Dad, this is from all of us. We wanted to give you something to remind you of these past thirty years." And she took the package from George

Except for an occassional Sunday, they don't make days like they used to. I mean they don't make them whole anymore..........Days seem to come in pieces now. They used to be in blocks-all one solid color to them.

Two losses, in fact. Two very dear children: Emily and Nicholas. It was true that these days there happened to be two very dear grown-ups who were also named Emily and Nicholas, but they weren't the same people. It was just as if those children had died. He'd been in mourning ever since. And now

In her skirted pinkswimsuit, her plump shoulders glistening with suntan lotion and her legs lightly dusted with sand, she looked something like a cupcake. She hadn't ventured into the water at all so far, and neither had Red. In fact, Red was wearing his work shoes and dark socks. Evidently this was the year when the two of them were declaring themselves to be officially old.

Every place I go I miss another place.

crinolines. You'd see the other girls wafting

I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories.

The scent of a faraway place lay on my skin.

I wonder why they never come back," Shay said. "Just to visit." Tally swallowed. "Because we're so ugly, Skinny, that's why.

The past was suddenly rushing in on me in a way I found hard to fight.

If only I could have my time again.

And in that history you're trying to connect to something that once was yours - to something purer, better, something that you lost or something, maybe, that you never knew but that you feel you knew.

Adversity often leads people to depend more on one another, and that closeness can produce a kind of nostalgia for the hard times that even civilians are susceptible to.

Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past Dried hollyhock. The objects used during the Display of Dolls. To find a piece of deep violet or grape-colored material that has been pressed between the pages of a notebook. It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some old papers. And then one comes across the letters of a man one used to love. Last year's paper fan. A night with a clear moon.

In the old days, even the most inconsequential people were impressive. You don't hear such stories these days, do you?

One reason to buy a watch (or a book) is because you want to possess it, show it off, give it to your grandchildren. Holding a book is a luxury, one for which you pay a premium.