O for those days when these tired metaphors were teenagers too, when it was still possible to recite ‘Daffodils’ and feel thrilled as you gazed at the golden laburnum in bloom. Recognising clichés is a...

Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn’tactually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in yourmind?

As we age we begin to grasp at youthful bliss like a life raft in a sea of harsh reality.

Aegean Islands 1940-41Where white stares, smokes or breaks,Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,Where sea like a wall falls;Ribbed, lionish coast,The stony islands which blow into my mindMore often than I imagine my grassy...

For sailors who love the wind, memory is a good port of departure.

94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney “D” still looked like a backwards “G.” Words like...

She didn’t want to forget how deeply she had loved him, how important it had been to her; she felt as if to discard the memory would be a betrayal of her younger self.

Evangelicals have squandered their cultural capital because they have tried to reclaim a standing in American culture that they never had. The American Founding was a mix of fragmented religious (and not-so-religious) voices.

Writing poetry was not my thing, for you my love every bit of my heart had to sing.

The Greek word for “return” is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Rocket Fever Grips Nation’s Teenagers’ cheers on enthusiastic newsreel, reflecting the nation’s sudden reversal in attitude following the successful launch of Explorer-I into Earth orbit. Rather than being strange and threatening, outer space looks set...

Me iba yo sintiendo como el barco: todo rodeado de color nostalgia. Un color nostalgia que incluso iba enrojeciendo de lo difícil que me parecía entenderlo todo.

I slept that night in the room I used to have when I was a little boy, with the summer wind blowing in at the windows, bringing the smell of the ripe fields. I lay...

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

we might have to eat the dog” poor, but still poor. Poor like, no insurance poor, and going to McDonald’s was a really big excitement poor, wearing socks for gloves in the winter poor, and...

Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something that had never happened to him, possible for nostalgia to be taken in by the body as a free pathogen to infect the consciousness with stray sentiments?...

As it is there isn’t a single thing isn’t an opportunity for some ‘alert’ person, including practically everybody by the ‘greed’, that, they are ‘alive’, therefore. Etc. That, in fact, there are ‘conditions’. Gravelly Hill...

This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when...

She could sense it very clearly: for me, no less than for her, the past counted far more than the present, remembering something far more than possessing it. Compared to memory, every possession can only...

Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes...

As pessoas geralmente não deixam a própria casa voluntariamente. Só a pobreza ou o amor fazem com que fujam assim às pressas.

The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.

Un giorno sentì una voce provenire dall’interno, da molto in fondo. Le sussurrava di esser stanca, ma piano, come per non spaventarla. La voce diceva alla donna che non ne poteva più di quella malinconia,...

Advice is a form of Nostalgia

Because that world’s gone. The world where people walked around whistling that music. All the madrigal singers in the world can’t make that other one real again. It’s like dinosaurs. We can put them back...

The scene sucker-punched Max. He never saw it coming. It encapsulated in one poignant instant the tragic beauty of his family history.

I am filled time and againwith a heart-aching wonder when I thinkof the fireand frost of memoriesof the everlastingnessof lovethe solace of familyand the power of prayer.

Ever poised on that cusp between past and future, we tie memories to souvenirs like string to trees along life’s path, marking the trail in case we lose ourselves around a bend of tomorrow’s road.

Parched by the deprivation of your love for so long made me forget what a cup brimming with love, on my lips, felt like. Everything that now wets it, only wrinkles it with a bland...

Long gone was the cheery welcome of the seaside hotelier, replaced by a weary nostalgia for the good old days.

I grew up in an era that was a golden age of the blockbuster, when something we might call a family film could have universal appeal. That’s something I want to see again. In terms...

There are no days more full than those we go back to.

Because nobody knows you better than somebody who knew you way back then.

Nelle notti d’inverno, mentre faceva cuocere la minestra nel camino, soffriva la nostalgia del caldodel suo retrobottega, il ronzio del sole nei mandorli polverosi, il fischio del treno nel sopore della siesta, proprio come a...

Michael [Hutchence] is hands down one of the greatest frontmen in music. The style, the voice—all of it. Any way that I was ever influenced by him really comes down to small, pale imitations compared...

It was nostalgic in that painful way nostalgia could be

C ţiva centimetrii, c ţiva ani, c teva mii de lei in plus, c teva cărţi citite în plus, mă rog, lucruri de felul ăsta despart oamenii.

This song always kills me, I said. She sighed, and then gave up. Why? Oh, I don’t know. It makes me feel nostalgia for a time I never even knew. I wasn’t even alive. That’s...

I would often sit in the corner of the room wearing Dad’s massive headphones, carefully replaying the records time after time. It was something I did frequently throughout my childhood with music, comedy and film,...

Looking at the elementary schoolers in their colorful T-shirts from various day camps, Percy felt a twinge of sadness. He should be at Camp Half-Blood right now, settling into his cabin for the summer, teaching...

It partook … of eternity … there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights)...

As to the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of space-time certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.

It is not settled happiness but momentary joy that glorifies the past.

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,’ said Cleopatra, ‘with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything...

I went through a phase where I thought nostalgia was a bad thing.

The sixties are like a theme park to them. They wear the costume, buy their tickets, and they have the experience.

It’s just odd being a guest at the wedding. When you dreamed about it for so long, even if you we’re a different person, and it was years ago. Sounds so stupid. I was stupid.

Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic.’ ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very...

I have loved you without a reason beyond the limits of common sense and I have named you as my precious, my dream and my hope. And I have loved you in every poem that...

The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it. This pronouncement seems to state the obvious and yet it is false....