Quotes About Nostalgia

ten years since he'd seen Sara, and

I love San Francisco," she said. "I lived there when I was a child.

We are all proprietary toward cities we love. 'Ah, you should have seen her when I loved her!' we say, reciting glories since faded or defiled, trusting her to no one else; that others should know and love her in her present fallen state (for she must fall without our vigilant love) is a species of betrayal.

The sky sinks slowly inside the past.

Writing the musical City of Angels was a wonderful job I gave myself. I returned to my loves of swing music and black-and-white movies and to the Los Angeles of my boyhood--playwright and tv writer Larry Gelbart

Like this cemetery, she was old and dry and what she had once been or even later represented had begun to slip from memory.

When it was time for me to leave, I thanked Mrs. Odom, climbed on Lenny's bike, and set off for home. As I pedaled up the road, I turned and glanced back at the Odoms' house. I remembered that first day on the school bus when I had seen it and thought it was so sad-looking. Then I pictured all those boys in that little kitchen getting loved on by their mama and that house didn't look one bit sad anymore.

The three of us sat out on the porch as the stars were beginning to twinkle up in the Carolina sky and ate blackberry cobbler before supper.

I wish I could've saved that moment there in that weed-filled yard surrounded by those good-hearted Odoms, with Wishbone sitting there on the cooler in front of us. Just pack it into one of Bertha's canning jars to keep in my room. Then when I was feeling bad about myself or loaded down with all my troubles, I could open it up and breathe in the goodness of it and I'd feel better.

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.

And yet why should she not be allowed her occasional joys, such very mild ones, which were mostly remembrance of things past?

The lines on Rugby Chapel…I wish I could remember some of them now, but English Literature stopped at Wordsworth when I was up at Oxford, and somehow one doesn't remember things so well that one read since.

Mrs. Wardell wagged her finger and stood up to go. 'But you're looking very nice in your blue velvet,' she said. 'I must rush off now. Old Dr. Fremantle and his wife are coming to supper. So depressing.' She sighed. 'Reminiscences of Oxford in the eighties, with a few daring little academic jokes. And poor Olive's so dreary.

Then she fretted, ah, she fretted, But 'ere six months had gone past, She had got another poodle dog Exactly like the last.… thought Belinda frivolously, but the old song had come into her head and seemed appropriate. Some tame gazelle or some gentle dove or even a poodle dog—something to love, that was the point.

And when adulthood fails you, you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept. There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's, it will always whisper, you can't have it all, but there is this.

takes us directly to visceral memories, transporting us to a time and place instantly.

My path is deeply littered with favorite poems.

I would slake my thirst sometimes at the wells of old remembrance; But the water is so deep I fear to fall therein.

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?

God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.

It is strange how attached we become to old friends, though they be but inanimate objects.

Do you remember that little vent that cars used to have on the front windows, so on coolish days you could let a little fresh air in without causing a big draft? WHO THE HELL TOOK THAT LITTLE VENT AWAY?

Everybody is a teenage idol.

Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then to maintain our sanity.