Quotes About Nostalgia

His eyes reflected a softness I had already forgotten in America.

Nostalgia is my vice. Nostalgia is a melancholy, and slightly saccharine, sentiment, like tenderness

But that's how nostalgia is: a slow dance in a large circle. Memories don't organize themselves chronologically, they're like smoke, changing, ephemeral, and if they're not written down they fade into oblivion.

If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

Las fotografías engañan al tiempo, suspendiéndolo en un trozo de cartón donde el alma queda bocabajo, decía

All you will have is the present. Waste no energy crying over yesterday or dreaming of tomorrow. Nostalgia is fatiguing and destructive, it is the vice of the expatriate. You must put down roots as if they were forever, you must have a sense of permanence.

Cada instante desaparece en un soplo y al punto se convierte en pasado, la realidad es efímera y migratoria, pura añoranza

Había tenido que tejer el amor con recuerdos...

La nostalgia desgasta y aniquila, es el vicio de los desterrados.

I go, but I always remember you.

Yo iba llorando. Allí había sido feliz.

Al final, lo único que tenemos a plenitud es la memoria que hemos tejido.

Supongo que en el transcurso de la vida embellecemos algunos recuerdos y procuramos olvidar otros.

Distance erases the contours and colors of memory. I have letters and photographs of the family that Juan Martín built in Norway; he calls me on the phone and has come to see me in recent years, when I no longer had the strength for such a long trip, but when I think of my son I can't seem to conjure the exact details of his features or voice.

you don't need photos to remember the people who matter to you.

His house of cards had collapsed, and he lay among the ruins—but he was free. He felt euphoric, weightless, years younger. The only thing he missed was Indiana, but she too belonged to the past; she too had been carried off by the wind.

In my case, it's not so much wanting to live in Chile as it is the desire to recapture the certainty I feel there. That's my home ground.

But that's how nostalgia is: a slow dance in a large circle. Memories don't organize themselves chronologically, they're like smoke, changing, ephemeral, and if they're not written down they fade into oblivion.

AND SINCE we're talking about nostalgia, I beg you to have a little patience with what follows because I can't separate the subject of Chile from my own life. My past is composed of passions, surprises, successes, and losses: it isn't easy to relate in two or three sentences.

El primer amor es como la viruela, deja huellas imborrables.

Paseando por los jardines de la memoria, descubro que mis recuerdos están asociados a los sentidos.

También te he aguardado siempre», parece que me dijo. O tal vez no lo dijo. Supongo que en el transcurso de la vida embellecemos algunos recuerdos y procuramos olvidar otros.

The nightmares of the past were like dust that had settled along the way: the slightest gust sent them billowing up once more.

Jaime vio a su madre avanzar por el corredor, descalza, con el pelo suelto en la espalda, arropada con su bata blanca y notó que no era alta y fuerte como la había visto en su infancia.