Amy Tan Quotes

I will never forget my beautiful days with you in Shanklin, they are certainly the most pleasant ones of my life. Look, I have tears in my eyes just to think about it. I am furious to be here, it is the end of happiness for a whole year.

I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.

The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

To return after long years of painful absence to some place which has been the scene of our former joys, and whence the force of circumstance, and not choice, has driven us, is oppressive to the heart.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, When memory plays an old tune on the heart.

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

All the best songs have an element of sadness.

I left parts of myself everywhere, The way absent-minded people leave Gloves and umbrellas Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck

I wondered how long it could last. Maybe someday, years from now.If the pain would decrease to the point where I could bear it.I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life.

Sign of old age: distress at all leave-takings, all separations. And the sadness of memories, because I'm aware they're condemned to death.

But that was the best time of my life, and only now that it has gone from me forever -- only now do I realize it.

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

(...) Since I was a kid." "Which you refer to as 'back when you were happy.'" "Right.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.

I’m not just taking trips down memory lane; I’m broken down on it.

I felt more alone that week than any. Sometimes I'd feel a body lying next to me like an amputee feels a phantom limb. All I did was think about Jennie Gerhardt and Alice Quinn and all the decades of people I had known. The more I thought, the more I felt like crying. Life seemed so sweet and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey, man, every day is a brand new deal, right? Just keep on working and something's bound to turn up.

I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.

What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness?

Memories have to be our most painful blessing.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.