Quotes About Nostalgia

Even so, everything was ever so slightly off, as if little by little the tracing paper had slipped irretrievably from the lines of summers past.

I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy considerations, the only place I could think of was the cockpit of a two-seater Kamikaze torpedo-plane. Of all the dumb ideas. In the first place, all the torpedo-planes were scrapped thirty years ago

As I run I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially I'm thinking of not a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

Halfway through April Naoko turned twenty. She was seven months older than I was, my own birthday being in November. There was something strange about Naoko's becoming twenty. I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever.

When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn't it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn't getting anywhere but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn't be able to survive.

Memory can give warmth to time.

No matter how vivid memories may be, they can't win out against the power of time.

It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me.

Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance.

Les souvenirs, c'est quelque chose qui vous réchauffe de l'intérieur. Et qui vous déchire violemment le cÅ"ur en même temps.

I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.

The past became a long, razor-sharp skewer that stabbed right through his heart.

Whenever she was asked to play something, this piece was the one she most often chose. "Le mal du pays." The groundless sadness called forth in a person's heart by a pastoral landscape. Homesickness. Melancholy. As he lightly shut his eyes and gave himself up to the music, Tsukuru felt his chest tighten with a disconsolate, stifling feeling, as if, before he'd realized it, he'd swallowed a hard lump of cloud.

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I'd close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people's voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I'd probably never know.

Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood.

My life ended when I was 20. Since then it's been merely a series of endless reminiscences, a dark, winding corridor leading nowhere. Nevertheless, I had to live it, surviving each empty day, seeing each day off still empty.

It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl's skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams. But none of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place. -from Hear the Wind Sing

You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.

Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail.

I've heard it said that the happiest time in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really get to us.

thinking of all I had lost in the course of my life: times gone for ever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.

I'll never forget you, I said. I could never forget you.

I straightened up and looked out the plane window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.

Todo un libro tras otro, los abro: la mayoría conserva entre sus páginas el olor de épocas pretéritas. Un aroma muy especial a conocimientos profundos y a emociones desatadas que, entre cubierta y cubierta, llevan mucho tiempo sumidos en un apacible sueño. Aspiro el aroma, hojeo algunas páginas y devuelvo los libros a la estantería.