Best 712 quotes in «nostalgia quotes» category

I understand, Bill. Because I tell myself a lot of stories to help me sleep at night. Stories about how Babe was my dearest friend, and I never betrayed her. Stories about how you and I had a great love, not just an occasional roll in the hay whenever she was out of town. Stories about how wonderful life was back then, when none of us told each other the truth, but so what? It was all so beautiful, wasn’t it? It was all so lovely and gracious. Not like it is now.

It would be one hell of an addition to someone's scrapbook. (Dark City Lights)

I’ve just been thinking it would be a lot of fun to live in a defunct shopping mall! Totally abandoned, Yet still frozen in time, Bright white lights shining, Artificial turquoise fountains spewing out clear water, Eerie eighties elevator music drifting by… Dancing erratically, shouting to the top, Because it’s sad to see these places die. They’re a testament to the hubris of modern America, which is dying in and of itself. Let’s face it. We know we can’t compete with Online shopping And Made-in-China products And eBay And Amazon. Those of us who spent our High school And college days Being wage slaves to these dying malls, We’ll be old and nostalgic someday, Telling our grandkids about these wonderful buildings! They housed sets of trendy clothes Which nobody was rich enough to afford Or thin enough to fit in. We’ll tell them about the first time We were almost trampled in a Black Friday stampede. The first time we saw a kid Vomit in the ugly rainbow ball pit At the children’s play area, Dumped by babysitters to grow up there, Spending their childhood draped in neon. The first time eating greasy pad-thai And hamburgers At the food court. The first time falling in love In the dark movie theatre That charges too much for stale popcorn. Holding hands in the sunlit rays Of the dusty projector… Totally lost in moments. What is the meaning of this voyage? Our grandkids, Who will probably have Smartphones Surgically implanted to their brains And identical glass condominiums by then, They’ll gasp in shock and say, “Wow, that sounds SO cool!” And we’ll sigh and say, “Meh… it was nothing special.

I want each day to last forever . . . It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing I'm aware of how ephemeral it is.

I visit you in my dreams and you talk to me in songs. Each sentence is a bridge taking me closer to the city that you are.

I've always had a talent for recognizing when I am in a moment worth being nostalgic for. When I was little, my mother would come home from a party, her hair cool from the wind, her perfume almost gone, and her lips a faded red, and she would coo at me "You're still awake! Hiiii." And I'd think how beautiful she was and how I always wanted to remember her stepping out of the elevator in her pea-green wool coat, thirty-nine years old, just like that.

I wanted to cry for the little girls we’d been before the world’s glaring spotlight eradicated our childish imaginations.

I was willing to yield to nostalgia, that melancholy residue of desire.

I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea.

I want to be six years old again - just for a day. It's not that things were so much better back then. They sucked. But I was the kind of kid who knew how to laugh about it all. That's what I want. I want to laugh.

Little hooligans showing off is okay when they do it away from us, but we don't need that kind of behaviour. You have to have standards. Would have done the same when I was their age, but I'm not. Now is now. There's no room for nostalgia.

I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles lived But there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together.

Looking at old photographs inundates you with a flood of nostalgic emotions! And you can't be sure where you want to swim in the deluge of memories!

Love is divine. Yet it seems to come from the unconsciousness. Man is perhaps too much nostalgic to his animal past.

Madre mía, cuántos castillos en el aire hacíamos, escribió Micha más tarde. La situación habría podido seguir así enternamente. Era como para vomitar sin pausa, pero nosotros nos divertíamos a lo grande. Éramos todos tan listos, tan leídos, teníamos tanto interés..., pero el resultado era estúpido. Nos precipitábamos hacia el futuro, pero éramos tan del pasado... Dios mío, qué ridículos éramos, y ni siquiera nos dábamos cuenta.

Magic, like nostalgia, was like a lie; empty and full all at once.

Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after… you know… after the funeral we haven’t had the money for any of your weird little games and I was hoping you’d be more mature now that Jud’s gone,” her father had disappointedly added. “How much’d that cake cost you?” “It’s paid for,” Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. “I used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy’s last year and I… it was my birthday, dad!” “You can’t even be normal about this one thing, can you?” her father had complained. Mandy hadn’t cried, she’d only stared back knowingly, her voice shaky. “…I’m normal.

Mandy smiled cheerfully at an overweight kid in a gold sweater and pink skirt who was chasing her little brother around along the boardwalk. When she was that age, on sunny days she’d be out on the boardwalk with Jud and Wendy, buying rainbow sorbet from the ice cream shop and placing paper boats into the harbour. She felt like a ghost, drifting past the shell of her own childhood.

Long gone was the cheery welcome of the seaside hotelier, replaced by a weary nostalgia for the good old days.

Ma se nostalgia significa il ricordo potente di un'emozione forte, e il rimpianto di non ritrovare più sensazioni del genere nella vita, allora mi dichiaro colpevole. da "Il senso di una fine

Más o menos cada diez años echo una mirada hacia el pasado y puedo ver el mapa de mi viaje, si es que eso puede llamarse un mapa; parece más bien un plato de tallarines. Si uno vive lo suficiente y mira para atrás, es obvio que no hacemos más que andar en círculos.

Mas o tempo… o tempo primeiro fixa-nos e depois confunde-nos. Pensávamos que estávamos a ser adultos quando estávamos só a ser prudentes. Imaginávamos que estávamos a ser responsáveis, mas estávamos só a ser cobardes. Aquilo a que chamávamos realismo acabava por ser uma maneira de evitar as coisas e não de as enfrentar. Tempo… deem-nos tempo suficiente e as nossas decisões mais fundamentadas parecerão instáveis e as nossas certezas, bizarras.

…Maybe I’ll be watching super-8 home videos,” Alecto told her, smiling bleakly. “I love my super-8 camera, it’s an Eastman Kodak one… Kodak stopped manufacturing them, the world went digital and now Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film and all kinds of traditional film products… it’s sad.” “Well, uh… well, have fun watching your home movies then,” Mandy finished, but she didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

Maybe nostalgia is itself the problem. A Democrat I met in Macon during a conversation we had about the local enthusiasm for Trump told me that “people want to go back to Mayberry”, the setting of the beloved old Andy Griffith Show. (As it happens, the actual model for Mayberry, Mount Airy, a bedraggled town in North Carolina, has gone all in on the Trump revolution, as the Washington Post recently reported.) Maybe it’s also true, as my liberal friends believe, that what people in this part of the country secretly long to go back to are the days when the Klan was riding high or when Quantrill was terrorizing the people of neighboring Kansas, or when Dred Scott was losing his famous court case. For sure, there is a streak of that ugly sentiment in the Trump phenomenon. But I want to suggest something different: that the nostalgic urge does not necessarily have to be a reactionary one. There is nothing un-progressive about wanting your town to thrive, about recognizing that it isn’t thriving today, about figuring out that the mid-century, liberal way worked better. For me, at least, that is how nostalgia unfolds. When I drive around this part of the country, I always do so with a WPA guidebook in hand, the better to help me locate the architectural achievements of the Roosevelt years. I used to patronize a list of restaurants supposedly favored by Harry Truman (they are slowly disappearing). And these days, as I pass Trump sign after Trump sign, I wonder what has made so many of Truman’s people cast their lot with this blustering would-be caudillo. Maybe what I’m pining for is a liberal Magic Kingdom, a non-racist midwest where things function again. For a countryside dotted with small towns where the business district has reasonable job-creating businesses in it, taverns too. For a state where the giant chain stores haven’t succeeded in putting everyone out of business. For an economy where workers can form unions and buy new cars every couple of years, where farmers enjoy the protection of the laws, and where corporate management has not been permitted to use every trick available to them to drive down wages and play desperate cities off one against the other. Maybe it’s just an impossible utopia, a shimmering Mayberry dream. But somehow I don’t think so.

Many contemporary critics of higher education similarly posit a Golden Age; but no one knows when it was supposed to exist.

Me iba yo sintiendo como el barco: todo rodeado de color nostalgia. Un color nostalgia que incluso iba enrojeciendo de lo difícil que me parecía entenderlo todo.

I wonder if we would ever switch back to old photo albums we got printed from photography shops. A Kodak KB10 camera with 36 photos worth of film roll, waiting for it to complete before sending the photos for developing. Nothing was instant, it would sometimes take months to compete a film and weeks to get the prints. The joy of seeing the photos, the disappointment to find a ruined image due to shaky hands. Even after having lots of camera and GBs of memory cards will never bring the same feeling.

Maybe that's just what nostalgia is: a willingness to embrace the pain of the past.

Memories are fragile, you try to grab them and they skitter away in various directions. Trying to gather them together to write them out is difficult, they resist, get clouded and escape as wisps of smoke. Nothing seems as crystal clear as it once was, a milky film of opacity envelopes everything. Odd details stand out in one’s mind, not a continuum. A fragrance, an odour, the smell of toast burning perhaps or whiff of jasmine, a shade of pink, a flower pressed between the pages of a book, brings on a sharp burst of memories that drown you with their immediacy.

Men always praise antiquity and fault the present, although not always reasonably, and they are partisans of things past such that not only do they celebrate those ages that they know from what historians have preserved of them, but also those that as old men they recall having seen in their youth. And if this opinion of theirs is false, as it is most of the time, I am persuaded that there are various causes that lead them into this deception.

Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.

Me miro y pienso en aquel joven estudiante de Filosofía, enamorado de las ciencias y con mil proyectos por construir. Todo murió... (p. 150)

Memories sharpen the past; it is reality that decays.

Memory is a queer creature, an eccentric curator.

Mille pensieri gli passavano per la testa, ma non arrinisciva a fermarne uno. Arrivato al faro non s’arrestò. C’era, proprio sotto il faro, uno scoglio grosso, scivoloso di lippo verde. Riuscì ad arrivarci rischiando ad ogni passo di cadere in mare, ci s’assittò sopra, cartoccio in mano. Ma non lo raprì, sentiva una specie di ondata acchianargli da qualche parte del corpo verso il petto e da lì salire ancora verso la gola, formando un groppo che l’assufficava, gli faceva mancare il fiato. Provava il bisogno, la necessità, di piangere, ma non gli veniva. Poi, nella confusione dei pensieri che gli traversavano il ciriveddro, alcune parole divennero di prepotenza più nitide, fino al punto di comporre un verso: «Padre che muori tutti i giorni un poco...». Cos’era? Una poesia? E di chi? Quando l’aveva letta? Ripeté il verso a mezza voce: «Padre che muori tutti i giorni un poco...». E finalmente dalla gola sino a quel momento chiusa, serrata, il grido gli niscì, ma più che un grido un alto lamento d’animale ferito al quale, immediate, fecero seguito le lacrime inarrestabili e liberatorie.

Most of the days, I am gripped by these visions, Memories! that haunt my present, What is it, That Separates me from You ? What is it, That can bring me close ? All through the night, i seek such things, All through the night, i lose Myself .

My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear.

Michael [Hutchence] is hands down one of the greatest frontmen in music. The style, the voice—all of it. Any way that I was ever influenced by him really comes down to small, pale imitations compared to the real thing. There is a fearlessness about him. Watching him at Wembley Stadium with 70,000 people, he looks as comfortable as if he were in his own living room.

Mistakes we make in the past sometimes keep us connected. Heartache keeps us connected. We want the past to be forgotten, to forget the people we’ve hurt and those who have hurt us and yet, it’s always there, in the periphery of our consciousness, because it has defined part of our life. A part of who we are.

Mixed with the love we hold for our native country is the fact that it is the place where we were raised, and, should anything have gone a little wrong in this process, we will be reminded of this fault, by the scene of the crime, until the day we die.

Most people think of Stephen King as a horror author, but his best work usually comes with a side order of nostalgic Americana.

My whole life is out here-the whole of my life...I'd come here naked, as a boy-straight from that river out there-throw my clothes on the floor and climb into that loft and lie there dreaming in the hay...All those summer days-scouring the banks of the Avon for smooth, round stones-scaring up ducks and foxes-kingfishers-swallows...somebody's dog...Oh, God-I want it back. Throwing stones that never reached the other shore. And the games-the games-the games, and all my friends...

My bedroom looked very different the morning of my eighteenth birthday. It looked lonely. I opened my eyes just as the sun started creeping through the window, and I stared at the white chest of drawers that had greeted me every morning since I could remember. Maybe it’s stupid to think that a piece of furniture had feelings, but then again, I’m the same girl who kept my tattered old baby doll dressed in a sweater and knitted cap so she wouldn’t get cold sitting on the top shelf of my closet. And this morning that chest of drawers was looking sad. All the photographs and trophies and silly knickknacks that had blanketed the top and told my life story better than any words ever could were gone, packed in brown cardboard boxes and neatly stacked in the cellar. Even my pretty pink walls were bare. Mama picked that color after I was born, and I’ve never wanted to change it. Ruthis Morgan used to try to convince me that my walls should be painted some other color. ‘Pink’s just not your color, Catherine Grace. You know as well as I do that there’s not a speck of pink on the football field.’ There was nothing she could say that was going to change my mind of the color on my walls. If I had I would have lost another piece of my mama. And I wasn’t letting go of any piece of her, pink or not. Daddy insisted on replacing my tired, worn curtains a while back, but I threw such a fit that he spent a good seven weeks looking for the very same fabric, little bitsy pink flowers on a white -and-pink-checkered background. He finally found a few yards in some textile mill down in South Carolina. I told him there were a few things in life that should never be allowed to change, and my curtains were one of them. So many other things were never going to stay the same, and this morning was one of them. I’d been praying for this day for as long as I could remember, and now that it was here, all I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and pretend it was any other day. . . . I know that this would be the last morning I would wake up in this bed as a Sunday-school-going, dishwashing, tomato-watering member of this family. I knew this would be the last morning I would wake up in the same bed where I had calculated God only knows how many algebra problems, the same bed I had hid under playing hide-and-seek with Martha Ann, and the same bed I had lain on and cried myself to sleep too many nights after Mama died. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the day considering I was having such a hard time just saying good-bye to my bed.

Não se pode repetir os velhos tempos. Como o nome já diz, esses tempos são velhos. Novos tempos não podem ser nunca como os velhos tempos. Quando se tenta, eles parecem tão somente antigos e gastos, como aquele pelos quais se suspira.

Não ter nascido bicho parece ser uma de minhas secretas nostalgias.

My poems are the ever yearning necklace trees Pouring out day and night my ever constant love for this land

Nelle notti d’inverno, mentre faceva cuocere la minestra nel camino, soffriva la nostalgia del caldo del suo retrobottega, il ronzio del sole nei mandorli polverosi, il fischio del treno nel sopore della siesta, proprio come a Macondo soffriva la nostalgia della minestra invernale nel camino, del richiamo del venditore di caffè e delle lodole fugaci della primavera. Stordito da due nostalgie opposte come due specchi, perse il suo meraviglioso senso della irrealtà, e alla fine raccomandò a tutti che se ne andassero da Macondo, che dimenticassero tutto quello che lui gli aveva insegnato del mondo e del cuore umano, che se ne fottessero di Orazio, e che in qualsiasi luogo si fossero trovati si ricordassero sempre che il passato era menzogna, che la memoria non aveva vie di ritorno, che qualsiasi primavera antica è irrecuperabile, e che l’amore più sfrenato e tenace era in ogni modo una verità effimera.

No, cool is fine," he said. "Yes, it's a cool place. It was much cooler seven years ago, and it was actually cool ten years ago, before I even got to the city. You see, what those kids over there"—he pointed at the empty booth—"don't realize is that cool is always past tense. The people who lived it, who set the standards they emulate, there was no cool for them. There was just the present tense: there were bills, friendships, messy fucking, fucking boredom, a million trite decisions on how to pass the time. Self-awareness destroys it. You call something cool and you brand it. Then—poof—it's gone. It's just nostalgia.

Never look back; you may only find what you left or let you go.

No nostalgia is felt as keenly as nostalgia for things that never existed.