Flashback Quotes & Sayings

But pink's a nice color."
"Not for goblins. Pink is the color of pure evil."
I had a flashback to shopping for one of my nieces in the all-pink Barbie aisle at Toys "R" Us. I had to admit, it had creeped me out. I nodded. "I can see that. — Lisa Shearin

As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn't exist before people were used to watching films. For instance, if you wanted to write a flashback in a novel, you once had to really contextualize it a lot, to set it up. Now, readers know exactly what you're doing. Close-ups, too. — Salman Rushdie

In a flashback, we hear Holly's mother summing up her life in a conversation with her husband, Wylie: "My life is one big mistake," she said. "No, it's not," he said. "It's a series of small mistakes. — Will Allison

She strong-armed the swinging door and walked through. Straight into an acid flashback.
Clara's first reaction was to laugh. She stood stunned for a moment then started to laugh. And laugh. And laugh until she thought she'd piddle. Peter was soon infected and began laughing. And Gamache, who up until this moment had only seen a travesty, smiled, then chuckled, then laughed and within moments was laughing so hard he had to wipe away tears.
'Holy horrible taste, Batman,' said Clara to Peter who doubled over, laughing some more.
'Solid, man, solid,' he gasped and managed to raise a peace sign before having to put both hands on his knees to support his heaving body. — Louise Penny

He sensed my sorrow and turned to face me
you know what I remember after the police came
what's that
you sitting on the couch with me
you didn't say anything
you just sat with me — Kristen Simmons

The flashbacks are parallel for me. You experience two storylines at the same time, and I'm not switching from one time to another. — Emma Thompson

Sustained negative flashbacks can stir a heart attack. — T.F. Hodge

You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for ... and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you. — Stephen King

The inability to get something out of your head is a signal that shouts, "Don't forget to deal with this!" As long as you experience fear or pain with a memory or flashback, there is a lie attached that needs to be confronted. In each healing step, there is a truth to be gathered and a lie to discard. — Christina Enevoldsen

Before movies, memory unspooled differently in the mind, trailing off in dust-blasted fade-out rather than spliced-together flashback; before photography, memory rippled like a reflection on water's surface, less precise but more profoundly true. — Steve Erickson

All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material. — Chang-rae Lee

It's a wedding reception, Morrie, not a fuckin' '80s flashback. — Kristen Ashley

I think that my regrets mostly have to do with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Every once in a while, you get those flashback memories of conversations you had with your exes, and you just, like, wince when you're walking down the street. Something occurs to you, 'Oh, no, I said that.' — Mike Birbiglia

It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps. — Peter Straub

When the blood came out of my mouth I could taste my own shit. — Stephen King

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage. — Robert Plant

This is shaping up even worse than you anticipated. Still, you feel a measure of detachment, as if you had suffered everything already and this were just a flashback. You wish that you had paid more attention when a woman you met at Heartbreak told you about Zen meditation. Think of all of this as an illusion. She can't hurt you. Nothing can hurt the samurai wh enters combat fully resolved to die. You have already accepted the inevitability of termination, as they say. Still, you'd rather not have to sit through this. — Jay McInerney

That's one of the reasons why 'Lost' has to end: because we can't sit around and envision, 'What is the flashback for Jack in year nine?' It doesn't realistically exist. — Carlton Cuse

You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can then express your pent-up feelings about the memory and continue on your path to recovery. Think of the flashback as a clue to the next piece of work. No matter how painful, try to view it as a positive indication that you are now ready and willing to remember. — Beverly Engel

Because of dissociation, many victims are able to remember the abuse only when a certain object, smell, color, scene, or experience triggers a sudden, severe reaction. During a flashback one seems to see, feel, hear, smell, or taste something from the past as if it were actually happening in the present. In a visual flashback, you actually see the scene of your abuse, or you may see an object or image that reminds you or is symbolic of your abuse. — Beverly Engel

I've seen 'Fried Green Tomatoes' too many times. I love life stories told in flashback. — Liam James

Pictures ... flashed on her in sudden color, too much color, shocking color, the color that leaps out of black when lightning strikes at night. — Thomas Harris

She smelled like fresh dough rising. — Jodi Picoult

Tell me where are the flashbacks they all warned us would come? — Jimmy Buffett

Mark nodded even though she couldn't see. He'd suddenly lost any desire to talk, and his plans for a perfect day washed away with the stream. The memories. They never let him go, not even for a half hour. They always had to rush back in, bringing all the horror. — James Dashner

Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?"
I roll my eyes. "I don't know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback."
"I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party." He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. "And I'm not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks."
"What's an acid flashback?" Izzy crows.
"Nothing," my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me. — Lauren Oliver

Oh, the foghorns ... even the foghorns, they're all brass. It's something by Ingrid Marshal called Fog Tropes. It's not a sound effect. It's an actual piece of music. If you listen to what's going on after he has a flashback about his wife you'll hear ... it sounds like the humpback whales in a way. But it's all music. And we use it again later, too. — Martin Scorsese

We were both young when I first saw you. I close my eyes and the flashback starts. I'm standin' there on a balcony in summer air. — Taylor Swift

I've been told by people I respect that flashbacks only work if they have their own narrative, but they can't be part of the present narrative. — Jill Soloway

At first she was so inexpressive and indifferent that I wanted to know more about her. I envied that blankness - it was the opposite of helplessness or damage or craving or suffering or shame. But she was never really happy and already, in a matter of days, she had reached a stage in our relationship where she no longer really cared about me or any thoughts or ideas I might have had. — Bret Easton Ellis

The charm is in waiting... The fragrance of a hope... The sublimity of a dream... The eloquence of a silence... The resplendence of darkness... The heat of winter... The cold of summer... The flashback of a memory... The unliving of a moment... — Avijeet Das

Green clovers. Blue diamonds. Orange Stars. Pink hearts. Purple horseshoes. Man, I never know if I'm looking at a bowl of cereal or having another acid flashback. — David Henry

I'm having a stress flashback." Davy bonked his head on the table. "My brother has decided to break into the house of the richest guy in the county and seduce his sexpot daughter, under his nose."
"I'm not going to seduce her," Sean said crabbily. "I'd go through the front door and talk to her right in front of her mother if I could, but those people think I'm festering sewage sludge."
"No. They think you're dangerous, mentally unhinged festering sewage sludge," Davy corrected. — Shannon McKenna

He looks up and up and up to get to her face. His mama's a tall lady, and he's only seven. He's overwhelmed by red. Red heels, red nails, red lips, red hair, red eyes. So help him, the boy has always thought his mama's copper-colored eyes damn near shined red. He looks into those eyes and knows she's come home funny. — Carolyn Lee Adams

And this, ladies and gentlemoons, is how my whole new Star Wars adventure began! Like an acid flashback, only intergalactic, in the moment, and essentially real! — Carrie Fisher

The function of the flashback is Freudian ... You have to let them wander like the imagination or like a dream. — Sergio Leone

I've just had an amusing flashback. All these creatures going in the same direction - they look like the commuters who used to surge back and forth twice a day between home and office, before electronics made it unnecessary. — Arthur C. Clarke

On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes. — Alan Rickman

Everybody is agreeing so tersely. I just had a flashback to the month before my parents finally admitted they were getting a divorce. — Samantha Bee

Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again. — Ali Smith

Nothing gives you a fear flashback like a bunch of strangers cheering in surprise that you're not dead. — Tina Fey

You know, there was a time when childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing you could do in your life, and you were literally looking death in the face when you went ahead with it. And so this is a kind of flashback to a time when that's what every woman went through. Not that they got ripped apart, but they had no guarantees about whether they were going to live through it or not.
You know, I recently read - and I don't read nonfiction, generally - Becoming Jane Austen. That's the one subject that would get me to go out and read nonfiction. And the author's conclusion was that one of the reason's Jane Austen might not have married when she did have the opportunity ... well, she watched her very dear nieces and friends die in childbirth! And it was like a death sentence: You get married and you will have children. You have children and you will die. (Laughs) I mean, it was a terrifying world. — Stephenie Meyer

No more tubs for me." I jumped off the bed and pulled on a pair of Pack sweats. "They make me lose all sense."
Curran sprawled on the bed with a big self-satisfied smile. "Want to know a secret?"
"Sure."
"It's not the bathtub, baby."
Well, aren't we smug. I picked up the corner of the lowest mattress and made a show of looking under it.
"What are you looking for?"
"A pea Your Majesty."
"What?"
"You heard me."
I jumped back as he lunged and his fingers missed me by an inch.
"Getting slow in your old age."
"I thought you liked it slow."
A flashback to last night mugged me and my mind executed a full stop.
He laughed. "Ran out of snappy comebacks?"
"Hush. I'm trying to think of one. — Ilona Andrews

Triggers are like little psychic explosions that crash through avoidance and bring the dissociated, avoided trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into consciousness. — Carolyn Spring

Once upon a time, I believe it was a Tuesday when I caught your eye, we got onto something, I hold on to the night. You looked me in the eye and told me you loved me. Were you just kidding, cuz it seems to me, this thing is breaking down we almost never speak. I don't feel welcome anymore. Baby what happened please tell me cuz one second is perfect now you're halfway out the door.
And I stood at the phone, you still haven't called. And you feel so below you, can't feel nothing at all. And I flashback to when he said forever & always. — Taylor Swift

The present and the past coexist, but the past shouldn't be in flashback. — Alain Resnais

How about 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7? Think about it for a minute. That approach has the advantage of giving you "I am your father," and of starting with the mysteries of the two best, while treating the prequels as kind of a flashback (as you're also focused on the cliffhanger ending of 5). Then you get to wrap everything up with the real finale, and the best, before the third trilogy starts. Not a bad idea at all. A — Cass R. Sunstein

For mysterious reasons, many authors consider it useful to provide a story about a forty-year-old man-about-town with a prologue drawn from his life as a five-year-old boy ... There's only one letter's difference between "yarn" and "yawn," and it is often a long letter, filled with childhood memories. — Howard Mittelmark

The only way Father is going to be upset in this case, is with the way the two of you are behaving toward one another. We are family, whether you believe it or not. Your lack of faith in Lucifer is what will do the damage in the long run. It has nothing at all to do with the time I spend with him. — Melyssa Winchester

Originally the film opened with Ryan in the doctor's office, being told his wife is dying. Then we see him walking the streets, and the story is told in flashback. — Arthur Hiller

When he unleashes on her everything falls together. Like a crick in the neck snapped into place, the boy's brain pops and is put right. It is a beautiful undoing, a beautiful becoming. He doesn't stop to think about it when the punches follow her down to the ground. He doesn't stop to notice when she goes still or when the pool of blood under her head pillows out into a great, liquid heart. He doesn't stop until he's pulled off her and he doesn't start to think again until that night, when he's back at home. For hours and hours his brain stays beautifully popped into place. — Carolyn Lee Adams

I've never met anybody who's had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties, and I've never met anybody who had any problem. I've had bad trips, but I've had bad trips in real life. I've had a bad trip on a joint. I can get paranoid just sitting in a restaurant; I don't have to take anything. — John Lennon

It takes more than going down to the video store and renting "Easy Rider" to be a rebel. — Dennis Hopper