He didn't like religion, hadn't liked it for years, but he adored churches, loved them like old scientific instruments whose time is long past but are nevertheless fascinating and strange.
When you die, you just die. No ghost, no reincarnation, no heaven. People want to believe that their souls live on or whatever, but that's only because they can't handle the idea of the world going on without them.
Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. . . . Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another.
People long to go backward in their imagination as well as forward. We don't wish simply to exist forever in some future; we wish to have existed in some distant past.
Reiko had not kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so. - Death in Midsummer and Other Stories
Not everyone believed in marriage then. To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too - that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.
These past two days, I’ve seen a fire in your eyes that I never have before. Granted, it’s mostly anger and frustration, but it’s still emotion.
I’ve aged more this past week than I did in all six days that preceded it. Will you still love me tomorrow, when I’m an older man?
Look to the past to help create the future. Look to science and to poetry. Combine innovation and interpretation. We need the best of both. And it is universities that best provide them.
To desire to change one’s past means there is a desire to change oneself. To desire to change oneself, one must learn to change.
The past can't hurt you anymore. Not unless you let it. They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But, that's not the real you. That's not who you are inside.
That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory— hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future.
We may only ever have one great, passionate love, but sometimes it’s best to leave that kind of love in the past. A love like that can’t last forever.
I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis.
He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself.
The soul of the world had opened and I fantasized that everything wicked, distressing and painful was on the point of vanishing...all notion of the future paled and the past dissolved. In the glowing present, I myself glowed.
the past is so hard to shift. It comes with us like a chaperon, standing between us and the newness of the present - the new chance.
In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagines past
The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved Southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!
We will paste upon the curled pages words Like charming and romantic and sentimental Forgetting that charming is witchcraft Romantic is love And sentiment is what makes us human
She had two blueberries for eyes, and hair the color of strawberries. Too bad our love never made it past the kitchen and into the bedroom (or garage).
