Ann Patchett Quotes

Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.

Everything about me remembers everything about 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.

Only one who loves can remember so well.

All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.

When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.

The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling ,and sewn with rebus threads.Most of the time , the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on .

I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do - that maybe I always will. I'll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think it's just that I'm not ready for forever.

The word 'home', it seemed, once learned, was a hard one to forget.

The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked.

There's no use in weeping, Though we are condemned to part: There's such a thing as keeping, A remembrance in one's heart.

Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.

There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.

Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

We revisit those places where we experienced love, as pilgrims return to holy places, to be reminded, restored, and reaffirmed by them.

Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love.

Remembrance of things past.

How vast a memory has Love!

You can go home again...so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.

Back on its golden hinges The gate of Memory swings, And my heart goes into the garden And walks with the olden things.

Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers.

My memory loves you… it asks about you all the time.