353 Quotes About The-past

To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumor kept her imagination awake.

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again,

The past is falling to pieceslike the beggar with his clown-clothes . . .

and the stones, bewitched, can see:The lost hours and into the past.

You seem to think the past is unreal, a pit full of ghosts. But to me the past is in some ways the most real thing of all, and loyalty to it the most important thing of all.

We have to outgrow history. History is what keeps all the old wounds and grievances alive.

I thought—at some level of my being, I actually thought—that I could go back to the beginning and change things. That I could make the blood flow backwards. I had the vanity to imagine—even if I didn't put it more strongly than this—that I could make Veronica like me again, and that it was important to do so.

I thought that if I could ever do a background check on myself, I knew exactly what I'd do with it. I wouldn't even read it, just take it somewhere sacred and set it on fire.

The one true thing about the past is that it is past.