Todd Haynes Quotes

History is an antidote to the hubris of the present.

The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.

I'm usually one of these guys analyzing what does happen and putting it in focus and context.

I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

I'm living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

You can't do anything sensible until you know what the situation is that you're in.

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have.

One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present.

Ancient histories provide windows to knowing current affairs.

I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future.

Some things get clearer as you look back on them.

I'm still digesting the '90s. It takes some time to get perspective.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

I think the beautiful thing about the past is that it leads you to the present.

Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost.

Time puts things in proper perspective.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

So much of memory comes from the beginning of our lives when we know the world for the first time with a kind of clarity. It is that discovery of the past in the present on which a writer depends again and again as if our lost childhoods, like the surprising cyclamen plant, are forever opening new blossoms.

The present time, together with the past, shall be judged by a great jovialist.