Don't Remember The Past Quotes & Sayings

They never experience the past tense. It's just another thread to them. They don't remember stuff, they relive it. — Peter Watts

My chest tightens: seeing him so upset breaks my own heart. 'Don't you ever wish you could make that bit go away?" I say, feeling angry at the past. 'That you could erase those painful memories, forget they every happened, just remember the happy times you had together?'
'You must never say that,' he reprimands sternly.
'But why not?' I look at him in surprise.
'Because it's the bad memories that makes you appreciate the good ones. Don't ever wish them away. it's like your nan always used to say, "You need both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow". — Alexandra Potter

I really need to remember to block my thoughts."
"Oh, come on," he pulled me closer towards him. "Why are you so scared?"
"Because the second that I let this conversation happen, I'll be letting my walls down. No matter what answer you give me, you'll have some sort of power over me, and I don't want that." I pushed past him, plopping down on the bed, not bothering to remove my boots.
I could feel the mattress sink beside me. Ian ran his fingers through my hair. "Come here," he spoke softly. "Please." I pushed myself into a sitting position, and moved closer to him, leaning my head on Ian's shoulder. "I like this, a lot. It feels nice." Ian lifted my chin so that I was forced to look directly at him, and then he leaned in to kiss me. — Nicole Sobon

Nurses are natural kleptos. You don't want to be in a roon without enough supplies, so every time you walk past the med-cart you pocket another saline flush. By the end of the shift you can look like a chipmunk if you're not careful. Some days it's hard to remember that the gum at the end of the grocery aisle isn't there just for you. — Cassie Alexander

I do sometimes look back at things I've written in the past, and think, 'I just don't remember being the person who wrote that.' — Brian Eno

I don't care too much for thinking about the past. The truth is just another story. You can remember it any way you want; it's never gonna be the same twice. — Frank Fairfield

Remember that the past fifty years has been the age of the Big Bang cosmology. We have learnt to see all reality as a slow-motion explosion, as pouring itself out and passing away, as dissemination. We live in a postmodern epoch in which there is nothing absolute, nothing permanent and nothing substantial. — Don Cupitt

This thing you carry inside you, I don't know what it is. I don't know where you got it. But Harry, the past is the past. You are alive today. That is all that matters. You must remember, because it is who you are, but as it is who you are, you must never, ever regret. To regret your past is to regret your soul. — Claire North

People like to say that time heals all wounds, but I don't believe it. I remember once Grandpa took me firewood cutting, and as we looked at the rings of the tree together, he pointed out the years where there was drought and the years where there was fire. So while time allowed for new growth that hid the scars of the past, those scars were still there, inside the tree, and part of the tree. I think about how I am like that tree. — Kaya McLaren

If you haven't said 'I love you' to someone today, do it. You won't always be happy, but you should try to be. Don't be too afraid of germs. Those people have no fun. Remember to look around sometimes. You might see something you haven't seen before or at the very least avoid being hit by a flying object. Speaking of flying objects, don't spend your life looking for extraterrestrial life, unless you work for NASA. Remember that you always have to cooperate with someone. Life is an endless negotiation. Play fair. Stay out of jail. Don't live in the past. Eat breakfast. It really is the most important meal of the day. Try to make new friends, even when you think you're too old to do that ... And finally, remember this 'Yes' is always a better work than 'no'. Unless, of course, someone has just asked you to commit a felony. — Lisa Lutz

Is he crying? I lean forward for a better look and find him staring right at me.
Oh,no.Oh no oh no oh NO.
He stops. "Anna?"
"Um.Hi." My face is on fire. I want to rewind this reel,shut it off, destroy it.
His expression runs from confusion to anger. "Were you listening to that?"
"I'm sorry-"
"I can't believe you were eavesdropping!"
"It was an accident.I was passing by,and ... you were there. And I've heard so much about your father,and I was curious.I'm sorry."
"Well," he says, "I hope what you saw met your grandest expectations." He stalks past me,but I grab his arm.
"Wait! I don't even speak French, remember?"
"Do you proise," he says slowly, "that you didn't understand a single word of our conversation?"
I let go of him. "No.I heard you. I heard the whole thing. — Stephanie Perkins

I don't know who had the training of you," he continued doggedly, "but your morals are shocking. You spent a night in my bed, remember, after a night in a bawdy house. You go about collecting street urchins and letting inebriated vagabonds kiss you, and then you get into brawls in pawnshops. You are probably past all redemption, but I'm going to reform you anyhow. If you behave yourself, perhaps I'll let you reform me on occasion, but I make no promises. — Loretta Chase

I've been a foreigner for the past twenty years. I don't have roots anymore. My roots are in my memory and my writing. That's why memory is so important. Who are you but what you can remember? — Isabel Allende

People think it way past the time when anybody can remember who start things first, but don't get the history of the ghetto twist up, decent people. Buntin-Banton and Dishrag start it first. And when PNP win the 1972 election all hell break loose. First — Marlon James

Don't swear at your past; you couldn't existed without it! It is the only path to reach today and tomorrow! Remember that past is a great teacher who thought us all we know now! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

But people don't need to remember how it felt to be happy and safe in the past. They need to have hope that they can get there again in the future. — Kiersten White

Christianity doesn't demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don't remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall the distant past. — F. Sionil Jose

Ernie got it,' I said afterwards. 'His experience taught him that you've got to fight for what's right. It gets you into a lot of trouble but he came to the same conclusion as me.' People think it could never happen here. Don't you believe it; it doesn't take much. — Denis Avey

What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I'd just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents' house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don't know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I'd made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. — David Macaulay

All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the past together again. So let's remember: Don't try to saw sawdust. — Dale Carnegie

I remember everything about her. The way she looked. The way she smelled. The way she'd come home from her job so tired she could barely put her feet up. I don't think I've talked about her five times in the past twenty years. But I think about her every day. I think about why she gave me up. And I think about why I still miss her. — Harlan Coben

I don't remember why it all went so wrong. I mean, I do remember. I remember what i did. I just don't remember why anymore. This - you and me - this feels so right. It just seems stupid - so stupid - that we had it before, and we let it go. We wasted so much time. I'm sorry.' She was close to tears.
'Hey. Don't. There's no point in that. It's the past, and that's where it belongs. This is us now. We're here.'
But where's here? We're hiding out. We're playing house. This isn't real life.'
'It feels real to me.'
'But it isn't. — Elizabeth Noble

It's rooted in things that maybe older people or people my age remember as being rock music. But at the same time, I don't think we're stuck in the past or retro. I think we've tried to push ourselves and experiment with what we can call Wilco music. — Jeff Tweedy

It's been my experience, Langford, that the past always has a way of returning. Those who don't learn, or can't remember it, are doomed to repeat it. — Steve Berry

We keep making decisions, every day, half without thinking, half against our will. If we don't fight back, if we allow ourselves to change, to be changed, then once it's done we have to do other things, and on and on until the person we wanted to be is so far away in the past that we only remember her, longingly, as if she were a beloved stranger. — Rona Jaffe

Mrs. Casey, do you love Christmas?
Well you know, she answered reflectively, Christmas can be a sad time for people too. It's a remembering time for us older ones. We remember the people who are gone.
Oh, I never thought of that, I told her in surprise.
Well that's youth for you, she said; you don't start to look back over your shoulder until there is something to look back at, and around Christmas I tend to think of the Christmases past and the people gone with them. — Alice Taylor

No, you don't remember, and sometimes it's best that way. Sometimes it's best to start fresh. Every day, fresh. Living always in the present, unburdened by the pain of the past. Most of us drag around our misdeeds like giant dead birds tied to our necks; we condemn ourselves to telling every stranger we meet the story of our anguish and inadequacies, hoping that one day we will be forgiven, hoping that we will find a person who will look at us and pretend to ignore the ridiculous dead birds hanging from our sunburned and weather-beaten necks. And if we find that person, and if we don't hate him for not hating us, if we don't hold him in contempt for not treating us contemptuously, as we expect to be treated - nay, as we demand to be treated - well, that person will be something of a soul mate, I imagine. — Garth Stein

Rules for Living by Olivia Joules

14) Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

and then the new one from Elsie, added at the bottom:

15) Don't regret anything. Remember there wasn't anything else that could have happened, given who you were and the state of the world at that moment. The only thing you can change is the present, so learn from the past. — Helen Fielding

As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. — Charles Dickens

Memory is that trick by which we see the awful events of the past loom over the good, like mountains over mouse. We don't recall life as it was. Instead, we remember what was different, frightening, or strange, and we turn our lives into the fun-house mirror images of the truth. — Jamie Kain

Anyway, time is more than counting days. On the outside, people think clocks tell them the time. They set an alarm for work and wake up to a blinking light that says six a.m. They look to an office wall to tell them if it is time to go home. The truth is, clocks don't tell time. Time is measured in meaning. I better get up for work or It's time to feed the baby. Or That was the year I got cancer or That is the day we celebrate your birthday. Or Remember when our father died or Let's remember to plant turnips this spring. It is meaning that drives most people forward into time, and it is meaning that reminds them of the past, so they know where they are in the universe. — Rene Denfeld

So, I believe that what you are looking for, really looking for, is that one person who is capable of recognizing you no matter what. You know, that one person who is going to be able to see past what everybody else sees and even past what you yourself see or want to show, then be able to look at you and really recognize you and say "That's not you! This is you right over here! You just forgot yourself, but I see you! I will help you remember yourself, because I remember you!" And that's what everyone wants. No, actually, I don't know if that's what everyone wants; but I know that's what I want! Because I can put up so many damn walls and faces just to see who really knows me, who really recognizes me, who really remembers me, even more than I recognize and remember myself! Because if I don't get that, then I don't get anything, because I don't want anything less than that. — C. JoyBell C.

Voluntary memory, the memory of the intellect and the eyes, [gives] us only imprecise facsimiles of the past which no more resemble it than pictures by bad painters resemble the spring. ... So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it, but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated, and similarly we think we no longer love the dead, because we don't remember them, but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears. A — Alain De Botton

If you don't remember the past, then you never truly forget it. — Alexandra Lanc

Memories separated in time are often recalled side by side-there's an emotional connection that has nothing to do with the diary dates and everything to do with the feeling.
Remembering isn't like visiting a museum: Look! There's the long-gone object in a glass case. Memory isn't an archive. Even a simple memory is a cluster. Something that seemed so insignificant at the time suddenly becomes the key when we remember it at a particular time later. We're not liars or self-deceivers-OK, we are all liars and self-deceivers, but it's a fact that our memories change as we do.
Some memories, though, don't seem to change a all. They are sticky with pain. And even when we are not, consciously, remembering our memories, they seem to remember us. We can't shake free of their effect.
There's a great-term for that-the old present. These things happened in the past, but they're riding right up front with us every day. (245-6) — Jeanette Winterson

Alwasy remember ... We are engaged in a battle for the continuation of
our capitalist, free-market economic model; our way of life; and our
liberty. The enemy is anticapitalist, believes in big government, embraces
collectivist ideologies, and has, over the past century, infiltrated every
level of our government and most of the banking industry. They don't care about patriotism, although they may sport the red, white, and
blue and the stars and stripes on their bumper stickers. They don't
care about personal responsibility or civic duty. They don't share your
sense of honor. All they care about is power and control over your
money and every aspect of your life. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

I don't remember much, which is a kind of mercy,I suppose. I see it in patterns.
Sometimes it's like a scribble on a wall- no matter how many times you paint over it, a bit of it always comes through, but not enough to put together the whole.
I try not to think about it too much. — Amitav Ghosh

With the refinements that come with maturity the smells faded out, to be replaced by only one other distinctly memorable, distinctly pleasurable smell - the odour of cunt. More particularly the odour that lingers on the fingers after playing with a woman, for, if it has not been noticed before, this smell is even more enjoyable, perhaps because it already carried with it the perfume of the past tense, than the odour of the cunt itself. But this odour, which belongs to maturity, is but a faint odour compared with the odours attaching to childhood. It is an odour which evaporates, almost as quickly in the mind's imagination, as in reality. One can remember many things about the woman one has loved but it is hard to remember the smell of her cunt - with anything like certitude. The smell of wet hair, on the other hand, a woman's wet hair, is much more powerful and lasting - why, I don't know. — Henry Miller

The particular aspect of time that I'm interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg. — Sean M. Carroll

To me, the songs I play are milestones of my past. Playing one will recall that time period for me, but I don't have the desire to recall it - at least not now.
But I know I can't stay away from it forever. Never playing again would be like choosing not to remember - or to feel.
And that is not the type of creature I am. — J.P. Cianci

Don't deny the past. Remember everything. If you're bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is gangrene. — Joy Kogawa

[E]ducation is a thing you get past and forget about as quickly as possible. This is particularly true of elementary and secondary education, of course ... . I began to remember what it had been like: the tremendous excitement of the first couple of years, when kids imagine that great secrets are going to be unfolding before them, then the disappointment that gradually sets in when you begin to realize the truth: There's plenty of learning to do, but it's not the learning you wanted. It's learning to keep your mouth shut, learning how to avoid attracting the teacher's attention when you don't want it, learning not to ask questions, learning how to pretend to understand, learning how to tell teachers what they want to hear, learning to keep your own ideas and opinions to yourself, learning how to look as if you're paying attention, learning how to endure the endless boredom. — Daniel Quinn

I remembered that she had also looked at me in that way in the past, from that remote dream where I made the chair spin on its back legs and remained facing a strange woman with ashen eyes. It was in that dream that I asked her for the first time: 'Who are you?' And she said to me: 'I don't remember.' I said to her: 'But I think we've seen each other before.' And she said, indifferently: 'I think I dreamed about you once, about this same room.' And I told her: 'That's it. I'm beginning to remember now.' And she said: 'How strange. It's certain that we've met in other dreams. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Old Jiko says that nowadays we young Japanese people are heiwaboke.112 I don't know how to translate it, but basically it means that we're spaced out and careless because we don't understand about war. She says we think Japan is a peaceful nation, because we were born after the war ended and peace is all we can remember, and we like it that way, but actually our whole lives are shaped by the war and the past and we should understand that. — Ruth Ozeki

LondonLane: I'm sure I don't remember everything. I remember the future the way you remember the past. You remember the really good and bad and forget some of the middle, right?
LJH6678: Sure.
LondonLane: Same with me. Why?
LJH6678: Do you remember us having sex? ...
LJH6678: Well? LondonLane: Truth? LJH6678: YES! LondonLane: Yes ...
Luke learned that he's going to die young today and all he wants to ask me about is sex? — Cat Patrick

The first time I walked alone, thirteen, I was terrified. A twig snapped under my shoe; my heart revved wildly. I'd walked these sidewalks a thousand times with my mom, yet I was scared by all her fears. Don't talk to strangers, walk quickly past parked cars, look both ways, all ways, always. Be alert. There was so damn much to remember to stay safe. — Aspen Matis

One of the problems in the United States is the refusal on the part of our young people to remember or to want to remember, or to recognize the experiences of the past as being relevant, germane, important to the present and to the future. They simply don't want anything that's painful. They want to live in a painless society where everything is pleasant, and everything is joyful. — John Hope Franklin

You know that old phrase 'Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it'? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off. — Chuck Palahniuk

Live your life the way you want to. Just don't live you life in the past. The past can you hurt you just as much as the present can. Just remember its your life. it's nobody's business accept for yours! — Hailey D.D. Klein

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don't keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, "Hey! Do you remember this?" Splat! — Jeffrey R. Holland

You, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in the half-darkness of the bedroom, not what has happened already but what is going to happen. In your half-darkness your eyes would prefer to look ahead, not behind, and they do not know how to foresee the past. — Carlos Fuentes

I know this sounds like quite a pile. I know, too, that some of you will wonder why I don't just buy a Kindle. I see your point, but the trouble is that to do so would be to forgo the pleasure of the moment when, years in the future, sand falls from the pages of an old book, and you suddenly remember the Isle of Wight and A Passage to India, a Greek island and The Map of Love, or whatever. For me, a ghostly trace of Ambre Solaire rising from the pages of a sun-bleached paperback is a way back to the past: to favourite stories as much as to favourite beaches. — Rachel Cooke

It's not my story anymore: whenever I speak about the past now, I feel as if I were talking about something that has nothing to do with me. All that remains in the present are the voice, the presence, and the importance of fulfilling my mission. I don't regret difficulties I experienced; I think they helped me to become the person I am today, I feel the way a warrior must feel after years of training; he doesn't remember the details of everything he learned, but he knows how to strike when the time is right. — Paulo Coelho

I pushed his hair away from his eyes and took a closer look at his cheek. Maybe there really had been a boy in the street, but I also wouldn't put it past Cole to make one appear,if he had that power.
Jack's eyes opened fully,and he looked at me with half a grin. "You remember the first time I told you I loved you?" His words slurred together.
"Shhhhh.Don't talk.The paramedics are on their way."
"Do you?"
I touched his cheek and he winced. I could almost taste his pain,as if it were a tangible element in the air.I could feel my body hungering for the hurt.It was the first time since I'd Returned that I craved someone else's energy.Even at my lowest point,those last moments in the Everneath,I'd never felt a need for it.Until now.Until I was faced with emotions this strong.
He tilted his head toward me,and I jerked back. The taste in the air became bitter and sweet,a mixture of pain and longing.
"Tell me you remember," he said. "Please. — Brodi Ashton

Am I making myself clear, Orrin? I don't regret how I've lived these past few years. I move where I will. I set no appointments. I guard no borders. What landbound king has the freedom of a ship's captain? The Sea of Brass provides. When I need haste, it gives me winds. When I need gold, it gives me galleons." Thieves prosper, thought Locke. The rich remember. He made his decision, and gripped the rail to avoid shaking.
"Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps," said Zamira. "But nobody can draw lines around my ship. If they try, all I need to do to slip away is set more sail. — Scott Lynch

There was a time - when I attained inner peace - when I died, utterly died to myself. I have since renounced my previous identity. I can see not reason to dwell upon my past, it is dead and should not be resurrected. Don't inquire of me - ask me about my message. It is not important to remember the messenger, just remember the message. — Peace Pilgrim

The theatre starts every night at half past seven, and I like the rhythm of going to the theatre, parking the car, going to the stage door; I've grown up with all of that. I'd love to do more theatre - I mean, I shouldn't be telling the world that I can't remember lines any more, but I find it more and more difficult, so I don't know. — Michael Gambon

I remember when I was twenty-five," he said. "No client comes to you when you're twenty-five. It's like when you are looking for a doctor. You don't want the new one that just graduated. You don't want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys. — Daniel Amory

Memory is imagination, and imagination is memory. I don't think we remember the past, we imagine it. We take a few props with us into the future, and out of those props we make a model, some stage set, and that's our version of the past. Of course models decay, and they change. And so we're constantly reshaping the past. Because the past is us. The past is our foundation. — John Banville

But don't forget that memory is like salt: the right amount brings out the flavour in food, too much ruins it. If you live in the past all the time, you'll find yourself with no present to remember. — Paulo Coelho

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

Sometimes we don't want to be tethered to yesterday. It's nicer to forget. Maybe the gaps in our memory are there for a reason, evolutionary perhaps, to give us the space to grow, to get away from childishness or childish things. Or maybe it's so we have the chance to invent, or at least include, some magic in our yesterdays, surely the consolation of getting older, of moving away from youth, is that we can shape our past to our fantasies. So, even if the present isn't going the way we want it, we can stand and remember our earlier selves as exciting and funny and daring — Sue Perkins

We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.
I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89 — Terry Brooks

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

Wow," the empty air finally said. "Wow. That puts a pretty different perspective on things, I have to say. I'm going to remember this the next time I feel an impulse to blame myself for something. Neville, the term in the literature for this is 'egocentric bias', it means that you experience everything about your own life but you don't get to experience everything else that happens in the world. There was way, way more going on than you running in front of me. You're going to spend weeks remembering that thing you did there for six seconds, I can tell, but nobody else is going to bother thinking about it. Other people spend a lot less time thinking about your past mistakes than you do, just because you're not the center of their worlds. I guarantee to you that nobody except you has even considered blaming Neville Longbottom for what happened to Hermione. Not for a fraction of a second. You are being, if you will pardon the phrase, a silly-dilly. Now shut up and say goodbye. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Remember that even if you were to live for three thousand years, or thirty thousand, you could not lose any other life than the one you have, and there will be no other life after it. So the longest and the shortest lives are the same. The present moment is shared by all living creatures, but the time that is past is gone forever. No one can lose the past or the future, for if they don't belong to you, how can they be taken from you? — Marcus Aurelius

Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about [history] than I know already. [ ... ] Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only
finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and you past doings have been kist like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'. [ ... ] I shouldn't mind learning why
why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike, [ ... ] but that's what books will not tell me. — Thomas Hardy

Everybody is I, you all know you are you. And wheresoever's beings exist throughout all galaxies it doesn't any difference. You are all of them, and when they come into being that's you coming into being, you know that very well. Only you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work your thyroid gland. You don't have to know how to shine the sun, you just do it, like you breathe. Doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you're doing all of this and you never had any education on how to do it. — Alan Watts

Don't regret what's happened.
If it's in the past, LET IT GO.
Don't even remember it! — Rumi

So Captain Jack's come a-courtin'." Her hands stilled on the basket. "Who?" "The tall Shawnee who come by your cabin." The tall one. Lael felt a small surge of triumph at learning his name. Captain Jack. Oddly, she felt no embarrassment. Lifting her shoulders in a slight shrug, she continued pulling the vines into a tight circle. "He come by, but I don't know why." "Best take a long look in the mirror, then." Lael's eyes roamed the dark walls. Ma Horn didn't own one. "Beads and a blanket, was it?" She nodded and looked back down. "I still can't figure out why some Shawnee would pay any mind to a white girl like me." Ma Horn chuckled, her face alight in the dimness. "Why, Captain Jack's as white as you are." "What?" she blurted, eyes wide as a child's. Ma Horn's smile turned sober. "He's no Indian, Shawnee or otherwise, so your pa says. He was took as a child from some-wheres in North Carolina. All he can remember of his past life is his white name - Jack. — Laura Frantz

When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago
and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail
it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name. — Chuck Klosterman

I've spent most of my life trying to make it to a future that still hasn't happened, or avoid a past that won't let me go. I don't remember when I've ever just stopped to live in the present, to hold on to the seconds I'm in. ~ Emma — Rebecca Donovan

Wearing my scarlet dress and high heels, I walk down the street a proud woman. A woman flawed, but still, a woman who takes chances, a woman who has loved and been loved. To go out on a limb (or twenty -or forty or sixty, for that matter) is what life is about. It's about trying until you get it right. I'm okay with where I'm at right now. I still don't have a job, a loft, a husband, or kids - but I have me. My grandpa is right. I can maybe maybe myself to death or make peace with the past, with any mistakes I might have made, remember the good times and move forward. — Karyn Bosnak

Irene and my aunt want from me what Miss Emma wants from Jefferson,' I said. 'I don't know if Miss Emma ever had anybody in her past that she could be proud of. Possibly - maybe not. But she wants that now, and she wants it from him. Irene and my aunt want it from me. Miss Emma knows that the state of Louisiana is about to take his life, but before that happens she wants something to remember him by. Irene and my aunt know that one day I will leave them, but they are not about to let me go without a fight. It's the same thing, the very same thing. Miss Emma needs a memory. Do you want she told me when I sat on the bed? That Reverend Ambrose and I should get along, and together - together - we should try and reach Jefferson. Why not the soul? No, she wants memories, memories of him standing like a man. — Ernest J. Gaines

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade. — James W. Loewen

What We Want
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there. — Linda Pastan

Live in the past, but don't remember too much. — Roger Rosenblatt

I don't live in the past. And besides, there are too many times in my career to remember specific events, because I played so many games. — Jerry West

Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don't remember it. — Paul Krugman

My gaze flew to him once more,noting the cigarette he set down even as he exhaled a long plume of white."Why are you lying there smoking while I'm chained to a wall?"I demanded.The look he gave me was a mixture of relief and cynicism."Since it seems you don't remember anything about the past two days,let me assure you,luv-I earned that smoke. — Jeaniene Frost

He left Molie's at ten past midnight, twelve hundred New Dollars lighter. The pawnbroker had also sold him a limited but fairly effective disguise: gray hair, spectacles, mouth wadding, plastic buck-teeth which subtly transfigured his lip line. "Give yourself a little limp, too," Molie advised. "Not a big attention-getter. Just a little one. Remember, you have the power to cloud men's minds, if you use it. Don't remember that line, do ya?" Richards didn't. — Richard Bachman