Jessamyn West Quotes

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.

There is always something rather absurd about the past.

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

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

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

I only remember the future.

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

The past is where its supposed to be.

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.

Nothing changes more constantly than the past

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

Historians are prophets of the past, not of the future.

I do enjoy thinking about the past.

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.

Nobody ever lived in the past.

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

The way you remember the past depends upon your hope for the future. And if what you see in your future has no hope, it has no potential, then you view the past that brought you to here as not very good.

Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.

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

The past is what the past is.

I was born in 1949 - which seems like a long time ago... Actually, it is a long time ago, when I think about it.

Time moves in one direction, memory in another.

There is no fence nor hedge round time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it if you can remember.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.