Robin Weigert Quotes

That kind of creaming off the pretty postcard image of the past, I think, is a road to nowhere.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.

We tend to paint the past only in extremes, as having been either categorically better than the present or irredeemably bad.

There's a sort of romanticizing of the past. When you actually think about the past, you know it's a little different.

The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.

Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren't.

Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.

We are always yapping about the 'Good Old Days' and how we look back and enjoy it, but I tell you there is a lot of hooey to it. There is a whole lot of all our past lives that wasn't so hot.

Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

The problem with relying on nostalgia for commentary is that people only remember the good things.

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.

If anyone looks back to the '70s, '80s with nostalgic rosy colored glasses and goes, 'Well, everything was awesome.' No, everything was not awesome!

In society at large, … nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making it needlessly negative about our current situation.

Nostalgia is a very human trait.

I don't buy into the glory days thing. I think every time has its great things to it. The '60s were such a glorious time but it's easy to forget that there was all sorts of bullshit too.

The great times were never as great as they seem in the rearview mirror.

That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.

I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.