Andrew Sean Greer Quotes

Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.

The present and the past coexist, but the past shouldn't be in flashback.

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

The past has to inform the present.

It is not history, theology or mythology that interest me. It is the fact that history, theology or mythology could have alternative interpretations or explanations. I try to connect the dots between the past and the present.

The history of the past, a hundred years from now, won't be the history of the past that we learned in school because much more will have been revealed, and adjectives we can't even imagine will have been brought to bear on what we did learn in school.

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past.

Ere we can forecast the future we must understand the present and bring a just sense of proportion to our review of the history of the past.

History is past politics, and politics present history.

Nothing changes more constantly than the past

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

No single conflict from the past can serve as a reliable model for struggles in the present.

Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.

Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.

The past assumes the nature of the present.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.

The great thing about history is that it is adaptable.

Can we ever understand the past, or do we just endlessly rework it to suit us in the present?

I also remembered that you were beautiful." "Memory does play tricks on us." "No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore.

What I love in art is that it takes known combinations and reorders them in a way that sheds light on something that they have never seen before or allows to consider the world in a slightly different way.