Margaret Atwood Quotes

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.

Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth. And our lives are forever changed. We will never be the same. The more you change, the less you feel.

I was looking at the photographs and I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

You can't live in the past, there's nothing you can do about it.

Should I get back to playing like the 18-year-old Mario Gotze again? I will never be the old Mario Gotze again.

My brother and I have a profound nostalgia for our youth, and I think people need to come to terms with things leaving and being gone.

We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.

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.

None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And, from the dregs of life, think to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give.

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

I think it's important for people to realize that we were all young, all naive, and also we had lived in a time that had magic.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

After all, memory may be the only thing on earth we can truly manipulate to serve us, so we don't have to look back at ourselves in the receding past and think, What an arsehole!

I still feel like I'm 19. We're old now!

Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell.

I love cameras but I find myself reluctantly taking pictures because what's past is past.

The past is not a package one can lay away.

Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago,“ has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday.

I used to think that I wouldn't change anything from my past, because doing so would inevitably affect who I am now. But considering my current state, I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to go back in time to fix things.

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.