Wally Lamb Quotes

America was different. America was a river, roarng along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.

Whether it is better to forget and let wounds heal or remember and learn from the past is a crucial question for all of us, wherever we are.

I would like to remember all and be able to forgive everything - in due course!

Forgiveness means letting go of the past.

I try to weigh out the dark and the light. They were both very real aspects of my Dad. To me, the good and the healing and the light outweigh the dark so much, and that's why I focus on the good.

Indeed, the greatest blessing that can follow the death of those we love is reconciliation. Without it there is no peace. But with it come quiet thoughts and quickened memories. And what else shall a man do except become reconciled? What purpose does he serve by fighting what he cannot touch or by brooding upon what he cannot change?

I once read that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past...but forgiving is not the same as obliterating memory.

And he wants you to keep that at the front of your mind? He wants you to stay focused on the darkest seasons of your life? How could that possibly do any good?' . . . He wants you to remember who delivered you from that time. That's the point of holding on to memory: delivery, not darkness.

Without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future.

The past can't be changed, can it? It can just be forgiven.

Forgiveness is the key that can unshackle us from a past that will not rest in the grave of things over and done with. As long as our minds are captive to the memory of having been wronged, they are not free to wish for reconciliation with the one who wronged us.

. . . your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not a part of the plan.

Forgiveness changes the way we remember.

All experience is memory, and so everything you write about is from memory-unless you're writing about typing.

If we say that monsters [people who do terrible evil] are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have...they are given the power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most. We give them power to condemn their victims to live forever with the hurting memory of their painful pasts. We give the monsters the last word.

We touched with a softness that pushed through the skin into memory, like arms plunged into a river - we could feel the weight of each other's stones.

It is through repentance that the Lord Jesus Christ can work his healing miracle, infusing us with strength when we are weak, health when we are sick, hope when we are downhearted, love when we feel empty, and understanding when we search for truth.

Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

Great wrongs have been done you, but the past is dust. The future may yet be won.

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in / There's an old man sitting next to me making love to his tonic and gin / He says, 'Son, can you play me a memory?/ I'm not really sure how it goes / But it's sad and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.'

...the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.

The past is what you take with you.

In one bold stroke, forgiveness obliterates the past and permits us to enter the land of new beginnings.

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.