Thomas Keneally Quotes

Quite like old times,' the room says.

I'm happy with the Byrds as a good memory.

I always think clothing is like a scrapbook: you remember all the good memories and the past times.

Seeing a time period captured in film, you know, it does make you feel nostalgic.

The thing I love about music... you can close your eyes and be transported back to a memory or a dream or a feeling.

I used to watch 'Last Comic Standing' with my mom before she passed. So when I got that red envelope, I was extremely emotional.

When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we grow up, and we were free to travel around the counry, we would always go and find it in Norfolk...And that's why years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didn't just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts.

In my heart, I'm always in my rail-hosen.

That lovely voice; how I should weep for joy if I could hear it now!

Memories are like moonbeams; we do with them what we want.

I'm just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart.

Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.

The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.

Africa, help me to go home, carry me like an aged child in your arms. Undress me and wash me. Strip me of all of these garments, strip me as a man strips off dreams when the dawn comes. . . .

But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them. —Ditta

And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.

Men go to the theatre to forget; women, to remember.

I really want to come back! I definitely want to come back. Some of my fondest memories are in New Zealand.

I'll hear a song I love and suddenly I'm isolated from everything around me just for a nanosecond. That's a moment between a moment.

It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again for a few pages. I got to live with my brother again for the entire book. Of course as I'm writing the book, I'm getting closer and closer to the end and I know what that means. I knew exactly where I was heading. It was really difficult, but it was nice to make them come alive for those scenes. It was good.

It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?

I'll tell you how you know when you're on something good: when everybody starts to tear up when they're leaving, when they're wrapping for the season. You know, when you say, "All right, we're done with McGillicuddy. That's a wrap for McGillicuddy!" And everybody applauds, but everybody's sad, because McGillicuddy's going to be gone! You know, it's like family going off to college or war. You have this intimate relationship with these people, and then - bam! - they're gone.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.

In a funny way, I like the past, I'm a very nostalgic person.

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.