Charles de Lint Quotes

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more

I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died.

They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose first -- they set the last. And all that mem'ry loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! It is delusion all-- The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are.

But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. 'He was the great love of her life, you know.' Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly. 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.

There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again.

I used to dream about turning back time, about reclaiming the things I'd lost and the person I used to be.

That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.

Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in its eyes A while I bid it linger near And nurse in wavering memories The bitter-sweet of days that were.

For years afterwards when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still to hear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into the places beside his heart. The night when they rode up the slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also the power of regretting it.

..all I left with was the magnitude of my mistake, of my missing you. And I have to watch you from this distance, watch you achieve your dreams, live what seemed like this perfect life.

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?

Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess.

In 1957's 'There's No You,' Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can't face and a memory he can't relinquish.

I think that my regrets mostly have to do with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Every once in a while, you get those flashback memories of conversations you had with your exes, and you just, like, wince when you're walking down the street. Something occurs to you, 'Oh, no, I said that.'

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

It's funny how you never think about the women you've had. It's always the ones who get away that you can't forget.

There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.

I'm just fascinated by the past. You know, both by the possibilities it holds and by the complete tyranny of it, the way it sort of keeps you in this stranglehold and makes you want things that you no longer have and you can never get back.

It's true what they say: 'You don't appreciate what you've got until it's gone.' I miss love. I miss being looked after.

Nostalgia is always doomed and dooming.

The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.

We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.