Quotes About Nostalgia

The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore.

No one saves an e-mail, because it's so inherently impersonal. I worry about posterity in general. All the great love letters – from Simone de Beauvoir to Sartre, from Samuel Clemens to his wife, Olivia – I don't know, I always think about what will be lost—

I've thought about you a lot over these years, been wondering about you. That's what you do in here … think and wonder. Every once in a while someone'll write me about you. But it's not the same.

My parents' cherished heirloom looks ridiculous in the new house. But then all our New York stuff does. Our dignified elephant of a chesterfield with its matching baby ottoman sits in the living room looking stunned, as if it got sleep-darted in its natural environment and woke up in this strange new captivity, surrounded by faux-posh carpet and synthetic wood and unveined walls. I do miss our old place –

revoloteando por todas partes, ayudándola a enroscarse la bufanda roja de punto, una vez, dos. A la tercera se la anudé correctamente y nuestras caras estaban cerca y sus mejillas igual de sonrosadas que si hubiera pasado un feliz día navideño montando en trineo. Algo así

so I turned on the radio and of course it was a Tom Petty song—is there ever a time you turn on the radio and don't hear a Tom Petty song?—so

There's something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold

When do you turn sixteen again?" "July thirteenth

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it

Flash of Marian, now bones in a coffin, a white satin ribbon wrapped around dried blonde curls, like some bouquet gone stale.

As the ship pulled into the slip, the familiar screech of the steam whistle brought forth a flood of memories. A terrible sense of loss came over me, and I thought of Parlange with a stab of longing. I began to wish I had never left this country of magnolias and Spanish moss, of languid days and soft, warm nights. There's something to be said for staying where you were born and placed by God.

Goblin, that was a dumb stunt. - It sure was. Made me feel forty years younger.

One's own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid down.

An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronising wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

In the telling, it seemed I was back there once more.

Mr. Kermit has a flip phone that's probably as old as his car. There are smart phones and dumb phones. His is a rock.

Do you know there's such a thing as Tater Tots? Back in Happy Valley, they told us we always had the very best, but we didn't have Tater Tots. Another Osiris lie.

All you do is complain. At least you got picked for something. The last time I got picked for something? Third grade. Hall monitor. Got so nervous I threw up, slipped in my own barf, and broke my wrist.

It only underscores the feeling that everything from our past has vanished.

I used to call my dad. The surge of emotion is so raw that it's all I can do to hold back tears. One look at him and I'm six years old again, and he's hugging me and stroking my hair the way he did when I was upset. I was living a lie back then, but at least I was happy.

As I looked back over my life, I realized that I enjoyed nothing--not art, not sex--more than going to the movies.

I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time. Cyrus Sitema

I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past *ought* to have been it was.

As I now move, graciously, I hope, towards the door marked Exit, it occurs to me that the only thing I ever really liked to do was go to the movies.