David Sedaris Quotes

It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?

Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case," in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.

We all look for lost time.

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

Memories, even bittersweet ones, are better than nothing.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

People look to you to replace a part in their lives that they can't get back. You can't get the past back, you can't do it. We've all tried.

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

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I'm just fascinated by the past. You know, both by the possibilities it holds and by the complete tyranny of it, the way it sort of keeps you in this stranglehold and makes you want things that you no longer have and you can never get back.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

There is nothing on earth that could ever make me want to relive certain years of my life when I was young.

The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.

There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery

Some things you can never get back.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more

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.

It's easy to get buried in the past when you try to make a good thing last.

You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.

I cling to my memories of glorious desperation.

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.

I'd trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.

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

It becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.

Nostalgia, the vice of the aged.