Whit Stillman Quotes

We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.

Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment. I wasn't ready for that moment to end.

Don't let your life pass you by, weep not for the memories.

It shocks me how I wish for...what is lost and cannot come back.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess.

Anyone who doesn't miss the past never had a mother.

I'm not the sort to wallow in nostalgia about the good old days.

My favorite songs to sing have always been songs about regret. I don't know why that is, but to me, that's country music.

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

I miss the game - I miss it a lot.

The Portuguese and Galician term 'saudade' suggests a profoundly bittersweet nostalgia.

The things about my childhood that I really loved the most, writing about those things was hard because I knew they would never happen again.

They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose first -- they set the last. And all that mem'ry loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! It is delusion all-- The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are.

There is something about the present which we would not exchange, though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in.

So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.

It was strange how you didn’t realise how much you loved a place until you had lost it completely.

I used to dream about turning back time, about reclaiming the things I'd lost and the person I used to be.

There is anguish in the recollection that we have not adequately appreciated the affection of those whom we have loved and lost.

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.

The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much.

Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.

Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.