Paul Scott Quotes

One of the reasons for going back into the past is that it's almost the only place that there's any drama.

Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold.

I exist only in the past.

There is always something rather absurd about the past.

The past is a present force.

I do enjoy thinking about the past.

The future is always here in the past

The past has an undeniable grip on everyone, except, perhaps, amnesiacs.

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

The only thing simple about the past is that it's not now.

I'm really obsessed with the past.

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

The past is where its supposed to be.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

I'm not particularly fond of the past, but I do ramble on about it quite a bit.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

History is the present day consideration of what went before.

Sometimes, to move into the future, you must go back the past.

[M]emory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.

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

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you're going to say, 'Where did we come from, what happens next?' The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Call us the future from your past.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.