Reflection on the Past Quotes

When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.

It was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.

I remember the past, and I learn from it. I rejoice and celebrate in the present, and I re-imagine the future. Now is the moment that never ends.

Talking about the past is like a cat's trying to explain climbing down a ladder.

But, I think that the reason I responded to this book, sort of paradoxically, is that it starts out like The Big Chill, sort of. Four friends, who are not quite happy with their life, and every year they get together for a week and look for some comfort from each other.

At 45, I am too young to write my memoirs.

When I'm writing my blog, I think of myself at 13 years old, back in St. Louis, daydreaming about Hollywood.

I like to talk about my life.

When you're old you feast on your memories, and if you spend too much time on exercise, you may get old and not have many.

Treat the past as a school.

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

I think about my journey sometimes.

You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.

Look at what happened in the Past. Learn something valuable from it. Do things differently in the present.

I told my whole life story in my book.

My past is very interesting, and I treasure it, but to write about it, it's just not on my radar.

We only have the past that we have. Not all of our deeds were incorrect.

Most people remember being 4 objectively, as if they're seeing a movie of a 4-year-old. But me, if you ask me to think about when I'm 4, I can feel myself being 4, and I am there, looking out through my 4-year-old eyes.

'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical.

You're always looking at last year, or 10 years ago, or your school days, or your teenage years, your formative years. Because that's exactly what they are, they're your formative years.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.

I go on the Internet and look at old pictures of myself, because it is the best reminder of how far I have come and where I do not want to be.

I am now playing for 100 years hence.