Quotes About Nostalgia

Run a finger along a dusty shelf, and you are in large part clearing a path through fragments of your former self. Silently and remorselessly we turn to dust.

It is a challenge to believe that there was ever a time that airline food was exciting, when stewardesses were happy to see you, when flying was such an occasion that you wore your finest clothes.

though I confess a certain fondness for the old-style Wimpy's with their odd sense of what constituted American food, as if they had compiled their recipes from a garbled telex).

I can remember when you couldn't buy a British Rail sandwich without wondering if this was your last act before a long period on a life-support machine.

to underscore the agreeably retro nature of the driving experience in Australia, I began to discover that radio stations in country towns specialize in songs from yesteryear. I don't mean songs from the sixties and seventies, but much earlier. This may be the last country in the world where you can turn on a car radio and stand a more than passing chance of hearing Peggy Lee

There was something so marvelously innocent, so irretrievably lost, about the world back then. You could see it in the easy, confident gait and sun-drenched smiles of the vacationers in every photograph. These people were happy. I don't mean they were happy. They were happy. They were living at a good time in a lucky country and they knew it. They had good jobs, good homes, good families, good prospects, good vacations in cheerful, sunny places.

cuticles), Vick's Vapo Rub, Geritol, Serutan ('Natures spelled

One of Milton's poems contains the well-known line "Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.

He had experiences as rich and memorable as any young man has ever enjoyed, and was moved by none of them.

Or look at the old money, with its florins and half crowns and thrupenny bits, and imagine what it was like in the days when people had to add tuppence ha'penny to one shilling four nibblings or whatever. With

I took a big draft of my beer, warmed by my reminiscences, and quietly delighted at the thought that my schooldays were forever behind me, that never again for as long as I lived would I have to bevel an edge or elucidate the principles of the Volstead Act in not less than 250 words or give even a mouse-sized shit about which far-flung countries produce jute and what they do with it. It is a thought that never fails to cheer me. In

Do you know," he said, "it's twenty years since you wrote Notes from a Small Island?" (This was my first book about Britain. It did awfully well there.) "Twenty years?" I replied, amazed at how much past one can accumulate without any effort at all.

I suppose because I grew up a thousand miles from the sea and missed the great age of passenger liners, I have always been subject to a romantic longing for ocean travel.

Boxing Day. Country pubs. Saying 'you're the dog's bollocks' as an expression of endearment or admiration. Jam roly-poly with custard Ordnance Survey maps I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue Cream teas The shipping forecast The 20p piece June evenings, about 8pm Smelling the sea before you see it Villages with ridiculous names like Shellow Bowells and Nether Wallop

It really doesn't pay to go back and look again at the things that once delighted you, because it's unlikely they will delight you now. I

past. Often a space-waster, as in this example: 'She has been a teacher at the school for the past 20 years' (Independent). In this sentence, and in countless others like it, 'the past' could be deleted without any loss of sense.

What fun you can have! And when you get tired of them, tell them to meet you at Brompton Road Station. It closed in 1947, so you'll never have to see them again.

The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.

Well, I went back to see about it once Went back to straighten it out Everybody that I talked to had seen us there Said they didn't know who I was talking about —Bob Dylan, "Red River Shore" Most

The typewriter racket was our song of hope.

New Rule: Someone must x-ray my stomach to see if the Peeps I ate on Easter are still in there, intact and completely undigested. And I'm not talking about this past Easter. I'm talking about the last time I celebrated Easter, in 1962.

People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.

There's a sort of jet lag when you time-travel to your own past.

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.