Quotes & Sayings About Leaving The Past

We followed Mrs. Morton down the High Street. She sailed, like a vessel, along the pavement, skirting around pushchairs and small dogs, and people who had stopped to wipe ice cream from their chins.
July had found its fiercest day yet. The sky was ironed into an acid blue, and even the clouds had fallen from the edges, leaving a faultless page of summer above our heads. Even so, there were those who still nurtured mistrust. We walked past cardigans draped across elbows and raincoats bundled into shopping bags, and one woman who carried an umbrella wedged into her armpit, like artillery. It seemed that people couldn't quite let go of the weather, and felt the need to carry every form of it around with them, at all times, for safekeeping.

The trouble with goats and sheep by Joanna Cannon — Joanna Cannon

New Beginnings


Each chapter that is ending
Leads us to a new beginning.
The past that we are leaving
Means a future we are winning.

Each change that fills the present
Sets the stage for our tomorrow,
And how we meet each challenge
Helps determine joy or sorrow.

In every new beginning
Spirit plays a vital part.
We must approach tomorrow
With a strong and steady heart.

So as we turn the corner
Let's all apprehension shed
And fill our hearts with confidence
As we proceed ahead. — Bruce B. Wilmer

A Farewell For a while I shall still be leaving, Looking back at you as you slip away Into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all alive, believing That in a single poignant hour We did say all that we could ever say In a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. After a while we shall be cut in two Between real islands where you live And a far shore where I'll no longer keep The haunting image of your eyes, and you, As pupils widen, widen to deep black And I am able neither to love or grieve Between fulfillment and heartbreak. The time will come when I can go to sleep. But for a while still, centered at last, Contemplate a brief amazing union, Then watch you leave and then let you go. I must not go back to the murderous past Nor force a passage through to some safe landing, But float upon this moment of communion Entranced, astonished by pure understanding - Passionate love dissolved like summer snow. — May Sarton

Not every girl has a bad-boy problem. Some of my friends get into relationships constantly. Others cheat all the time, or run away. Some get jealous. Some think they are too undateable to even try. Our dating pool is a circus of fuckups, misfits, and past mistakes that we keep on making. The brand of baggage you're carrying on your back is the issue. But most of all, I think we fear the same thing. I think that thing is love. Real love. Think of your first love. Think of how Bambi-like you were, prancing around all excited and in love with everything. Then think of how that happiness was beaten to death with a hatchet, spit on, shit on, leaving you cold. If you watch something you care about get destroyed, you're not going to want to go back to that place, no matter how pleasant it ever was. — Alida Nugent

You can make the future, but it starts with leaving the past. — Immortal Technique

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

There's a trick to the 'graceful exit.' It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over - and let it go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out. — Ellen Goodman

Leaving high school. It's sad and you're going to miss all your friends. You're going to miss your life and you've been doing that for the past four years, and it's comfortable. But now, there's something possibly bigger on the horizon, just new and fresh and exciting. I think we all kind of felt like that. — Matt Lanter

People brush past us on the street in endless waves, leaving somewhere, headed somewhere else, laughing, smoking, speaking into cell phones, completely oblivious to the holocaust of an entire world casually imploding in their midst. — Jonathan Tropper

We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign - and no memories. The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. — Joseph Conrad

He also loved the city itself. Coming to and leaving Cousin Joe's, he would gorge himself on hot dogs and cafeteria pie, price cigarette lighters and snap-brim hats in store windows, follow the pushboys with their rustling racks of furs and trousers. There were sailors and prizefighters; there were bums, sad and menacing, and ladies in piped jackets with dogs in their handbags. Tommy would feel the sidewalks hum and shudder as the trains rolled past beneath him. He heard men swearing and singing opera. On a sunny day, his peripheral vision would be spangled with light winking off the chrome headlights of taxicabs, the buckles on ladies' shoes, the badges of policemen, the handles of pushcart lunch-wagons, the bulldog ornaments on the hoods of irate moving vans. This was Gotham City, Empire City, Metropolis. Its skies and rooftops were alive with men in capes and costumes, on the lookout for wrongdoers, saboteurs, and Communists. Tommy — Michael Chabon

Without a word or glance, Sin walked past her and climbed up to the stables loft. 'What's he doing?' she asked Braden as she rejoined him. 'I'm leaving the two of you alone,' Sin's muffled voice answered from above. Braden tilted his head up to stare at the wooden beams above their heads. 'Like it would matter, since we know you can hear everything we say?' 'Aye, well, I'm a pervert, not a voyeur.'
-Maggie, Sin, & Braden — Kinley MacGregor

one might call this state ["youth" (but that seems inaccurate)] "remembering" but memory is quite eerie like caging a dream, and when I recite the rote details the real event slithers further from me because the telling of it reshapes it, every touch alters it, until it is unrecognizable except as a story [a doppelganger (immediately not myself) a writhing poltergeist summoned to snap at me from the darkness~or benign but vague, like a whisper making it better to remain silent, but I can't~the past is a narrative (that writes us) immanent in the present [proving there is cause and effect in the immaterial (the mythic becomes carnal by leaving marks on the body)] symbol by symbol, building up invisible scars — David David Katzman

It would be the simplest thing to say, my homeland is where I was born. But when you returned, you found nothing. What does that mean? It would be the simplest thing to say, my homeland is where I will die. But you could die anywhere, or on the border between two places. What does that mean? After a while the question will become harder. Why did you leave? Why did you leave? For twenty years you have been asking, why did they leave? Leaving is not a negation of the homeland, but it does turn the problem into a question. Do not write a history now. When you do that, you leave the past behind, and what is required is to call the past to account. Do not write a history except that of your wounds. Do not write a history except that of your exile. You are here - here, where you were born. And where longing will lead you to death. So, what is homeland? — Mahmoud Darwish

There the book fell, and it seemed to Conway that an invisible hand had struck it out of his. He rose, leaving the journal lying open as it had fallen, and hurried from the room. A gloom filled the passage and the house was full of horror, resounding with the sufferings of its past inhabitants and dripping with their tears. His hand closed upon the damp balustrade, and the rotten wood exuded moisture like a sponge. A minute later the owner, but not the master, of the Strath was speeding through the garden, his being reaching out to find an affinity, as embryonic life must grope into the darkness for its promised soul. — Ernest G. Henham

I've never been afraid of ghosts. I live with them daily, after all. When I look in a mirror, my mother's eyes look back at me; my mouth curls with the smile that lured my great-grandfather to the fate that was me. No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands, laid on me in love unknowing? How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh, leaving their remnants to live long past the grave? ... All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our own ghosts; we haunt ourselves. — Diana Gabaldon

What importance can we attach to the things of this world? Friendship? It disappears when the one who is liked comes to grief, or the one who likes becomes powerful. Love? it is deceived, fleeting, or guilty. Fame? You share it with mediocrity or crime. Fortune? Could that frivolity be counted a blessing? All that remains are those so-called happy days that flow past unnoticed in the obscurity of domestic cares, leaving man with the desire neither to lose his life nor to begin it over. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism. — Terry Pratchett

Deployed upon that plain they moved in a constant elision, ordained agents of the actual dividing out the world which they encountered and leaving what had been and what would never be alike extinguished on the ground behind them. — Cormac McCarthy

The sun stands low in the cloudless eastern sky, a fat, confident yellow-white ball advancing as ever for the first time toward the future and leaving in its wake the steadily accumulating past, which darkens as it recedes, making blind men of us all. — Stephen King

Hopes were high. But just like a balloon pushed past its breaking point, hope is fragile. One lungful of air too many and the balloon bursts leaving ugly, shriveled fragments behind, impossible to piece back together. — Adriane Leigh

Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.
But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza - a harami like herself, as it turned out - had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable.
We're leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam. — Khaled Hosseini

Let go of the past. Let go of the future. Let go of the present. Proceed to the opposite shore with a free mind, leaving behind all conditioned things. — Thich Nhat Hanh

People who picnic along the public highway leaving a clutter of greasy paper and swill (not a pretty name, but neither is it a pretty object!) for other people to walk or drive past, and to make a breeding place for flies, and furnish nourishment for rats, choose a disgusting way to repay the land-owner for the liberty they took in temporarily occupying his property. — Emily Post

Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir ... Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures. — Arthur C. Clarke

I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a strange thing how quickly our bodies die. How fragile a force our presence is. In an instant the soul is gone - leaving an empty, insignificant vessel in its stead. I have read of those sent to the gallows and guillotines of Europe. I have read of the great war of ages past and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to such deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts. But in doing so, we forget that they were each as alive as we, and the one length of rope - or bullet - or blade, took the whole of their lives in that one, fragile instant. Took their earliest days as swaddled infants, and their grayest unfulfilled futures. When one think of how many souls have suffered this fate in all of history - of the untold murders of untold men, women and children.. it is too much to bear. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present - intolerable - and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color. — Toni Morrison

The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end. — Liu Cixin

Our connection didn't have the bandwidth to sustain the pain buried far enough in our past to cause the grind of our present. His past belonged to her, even though she'd cut the line, taking it with her, tugging at him, leaving no one else for him to give it to. — C.D. Reiss

When my father was getting along in years and the past began to figure more in his conversation, I asked him one day what my mother was like. I knew what she was like as my mother but I thought it was time somebody told me what she was like as a person. To my surprise he said, "That's water over the dam," shutting me up but also leaving me in doubt, because of his abrupt tone of voice, whether he didn't after all this time have any feeling about her much, or did have but didn't think he ought to. In any case he didn't feel like talking about her to me. — William Maxwell

No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands laid on me in love knowing? How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh, leaving their remnants to live long past the grave? — Diana Gabaldon

We are past the end of things now, but I don't want to leave. — Richard Ford

Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I realized early that despite her gregarious and inherently buoyant disposition, a certain sadness resided in my mother. Even I, her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, could do little to soothe the sorrow that has taken root with the separation from her parents, her two sisters and her brother. The contrast in the life my mother experienced before and after leaving Tibet was so extreme, it must have been impossible for her to make sense of her life and to escape the inexhaustible longing for the past. Caring for me on her own inside crowded rooms of tenement buildings in towns and cities, she must have felt she had dreamt her past or that she was dreaming her present existence. The places and residences we lived in were never quite home to her and led her to cling, more tenaciously, to the past. My mother had guarded her past sorrows from me because she knew me well enough to sense I would carry her grief as my own. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we may now expect to see, not only in theory and in books but in actual practice, calculated for the general good, and taking no more upon it than the general good requires, leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with men's notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine. — Joseph Priestley

We can ask for forgiveness, from a god, from a friend, a lover, even ourselves. We can ask for forgiveness from all of the people we've wronged, but we can never get back the one thing we're truly hoping to find when we asked: our innocence - the person we were before that piece of us was taken, ripped away and shattered at our feet, leaving us to learn how to pick ourselves back up and move past it. — Kristen Kehoe

Leading with our heart requires replacing fear with faith. It means releasing the desire to control situations or people, or see the future, or change a past event. We accept our personal power by purposefully leaving no loose ends, so we move from day to day without regret. — Regina Cates

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. — Beryl Markham

And in time we may remember, collecting every little memory, all the bits and pieces, into a larger memory, rebuilding a great layered and labyrinthine, now imagined, international hotel of many rooms, the urban experiment of a homeless community built to house the needs of temporary lives. And for what? To resist death and dementia. To haunt a disappearing landscape. To forever embed this geography with our visions and voices. To kiss the past and you good-bye, leaving the indelible spit of our DNA on still moist lips. Sweet. Sour. Salty. Bitter. — Karen Tei Yamashita

Maybe you've gotten through something and when you did you thought, I am leaving that behind and will never return. And that's a great way of thinking ... for selfish jerks.
If we actually care about people other than ourselves, we can't leave our problems behind and never return. If we don't take the freedom we've experienced and try to bring it to others, we are not becoming people worth becoming. — Vince Antonucci

From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone. — Haruki Murakami

The truth is not so important as the leaving of it behind. — Clare Francis

The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn. — Allen Ginsberg

It's just that every time I've come home for the past five years - before that, even. From college - something's changed a little more . . ." " - and you're not sure you like it, eh?" Henry was grinning in the moonlight and she could see him. She sat up. "I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb." Henry said, "You wouldn't, you know. I don't mean to press you for an answer - don't move - but you've got to make up your mind to one thing, Jean Louise. You're gonna see change, you're gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can't. Sooner or later you'll — Harper Lee

Have you ever heard a woman claim that the reason why she is chronically mistreating her male partner is because a previous man abused her? I have never run into this excuse in the fifteen years I have worked in the field of abuse. Certainly I have encountered cases where women had trouble trusting another man after leaving an abuser, but there is a critical distinction to be made: Her past experiences may explain how she feels, but they are not an excuse for how she behaves. And the same is true for a man. — Lundy Bancroft

The soul of us is never confused about why it is here.
It only asks us to wake up and see the breadcrumb clues it has been leaving all along.
It asks us to have courage to face the wounds we have been hiding, allow it to heal them and untangle the heavy, snarled patterns.
Because the soul of us has no doubt whatever that it can and, if we allow it to express fully, can live a life of such power and joy through us that our human selves will be astonished. — Jacob Nordby

In the freshness of the present moment, past is gone, future is not yet born, and - if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom - disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace. That is basic meditation. — Matthieu Ricard

It was a thing intangible, yet clearly felt - the sense that time was moving round him, past him, leaving him untouched. — Susanna Kearsley

Those unexpected morality lessons provided by the trip had jolted me into some kind of action. It was time to jettison the past before the present jettisoned me. This was my first veiled attempt at recovery. Although perhaps I was just running away again. I returned to Glasgow, planning to say a final goodbye to Anne and get out of her life, but ended up drinking with buddies in the Chip Bar and never seeing her. I called her instead to say I was moving to London and told her she could have the house and everything else we owned, which wasn't much. I think she was as relieved as I was that I was leaving town for good. — Craig Ferguson

During those last weeks of the Bishop's life he thought very little about death; it was the Past he was leaving. The future would take care of itself. — Willa Cather

Some of the fragments bore clear scratches, reminding him that those things had indeed taken place. The details were vivid, but the feelings had vanished without a trace. The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end. He — Liu Cixin

I hope I'm not disturbing anything," Finn said, looking past Duncan at me.
As soon as his dark eyes landed on mine, my breath caught in my throat. He stood at the door, his black hair mussed a bit.His vest was still neatly pressed but it was marred with a dark stain from Elora's blood.
"No,not at all," I said, sitting up further.
"Actually,we were-" Matt began,his voice hard.
"Actually,we were leaving," Willa cut him off. She scooted off the bed,and Matt shot her a look, which she only smiled at. "We were just saying that we had something to do in your room. Weren't we,Matt?"
"Fine," Matt grumbled and stood up. Finn moved aside to Matt and Willa could walk out of the room, and Matt gave him a warning glare. "But we'll just be right across the hall."
Willa grabbed Matt's hand to keep him moving. Finn, as usual, seemed oblivious to Matt's threats, which only made Matt angrier. — Amanda Hocking

THE MEETING GOT under way as soon as Marshall walked into the room. He looked dignified and serious, and he was wearing a dark suit. There were three men at the conference table, across from him, from a company in Boston that was not quite as large as UPI, but very close, and its growth rate had been remarkable in the past two years. It was well on its way to becoming the largest corporation in the country and outstripping all its competitors. And all it needed now was a powerful leader at its helm. And everyone at its base in Boston had agreed that Marshall Weston was the one. They had no idea if he would consider leaving UPI, and they doubted it after fifteen years, but they had come to California to try and convince him to do it. And he was listening raptly to what they said. It was their second meeting in two days, and they were going back to Boston that night. Marshall — Danielle Steel

The Berg flew past them, over street after empty street. And then there was a small building with double doors hanging wide open. A hand-painted sign said PFC PERSONNEL ONLY. A few people were lined up to go inside. They seemed calm and collected. Mark hated them for it and had a fleeting moment where he itched to find the Transvice to start firing away. "That's ... it," Alec muttered. And Mark knew what he meant. If there really was a Flat Trans device, it would be there. The few people entering the building had to be the last of the PFC workers, fleeing the East once and for all. Leaving it to be claimed by madness — James Dashner

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. — Maya Angelou

My father also told me that people had always suffered from being tied to the ground, from not being able to detach themselves from it. But they had dreamed of leaving it, and so they had invented the garden of paradise, which had in it everything they yearned for but lacked in their lives, and they had dreamed up creatures similar to themselves but equipped with wings. But what in the past had only been dreamed of was now beginning to materialize, my father said, pointing to the sky. Angels did not exist, but people could now fly. There was no paradise for human souls to dwell in, but one day I would understand that it was more important for people to live well and happily here on earth. — Ivan Klima

Counting on each other became automatic. When I found a sweater in Texas I wanted, I learned to buy two, which was easier than seeing the look of disappointment on Caroline's face when I returned home with only one. When she went out from the boathouse on a windy day, she gave me her schedule in advance, which assuaged her worst-case scenario of flipping the boat, being hit on the head by an oar, and leaving Lucille stranded at home. I still have my set of keys to her house, to locks and doors that no longer exist, and I keep them in my glove compartment, where they have been moved from one car to another in the past couple of years. Someday I will throw them in the Charles, where I lost the seat to her boat and so much else. — Gail Caldwell

By half-past one the last drop of pleasure had evaporated, leaving nothing but headaches. We perceived that we were not splendid inhabitants of a splendid world, but a crew of underpaid workmen grown squalidly and dismally drunk. We went on swallowing the wine, but it was only from habit, and the stuff seemed suddenly nauseating ...
Most of my Saturday nights went in this way. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living. — George Orwell

Shadows go in front of you, leading into your future, and trail behind you, leaving a part of you in the past. They are clearest when we are in the light, and disappear when we lose ourselves in darkness. — Kiersten White

The past is but an untraceable footfall
It appears in intervals and pushes us back in time,
In those moments of grief and then suddenly vanishes.
It's often dark and ruthless.
It baffles our thoughts and seizes our peace of mind.
By making us recollect our failures, our buried expectations
And our shattered dreams
It only gives way to fleeting tears, leaving us with fruitless guilt.
It wrecks our present and ruins our future
And thus should be left where it is meant to be
It should be left behind ... — Chirag Tulsiani

I spent the past week here in India getting a sense of the reality of HIV and AIDS in people's lives. Fathers and mothers are dying, leaving children with no support. Stigma and discrimination is ruining the family lives. There is an urgent need for education, information, and increased awareness of HIV and AIDS. The response needs to be now. We cannot afford to become fatigued. — Ralph Fiennes

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter. — Charles De Lint

How long since he'd been back home? Ten years? Fifteen? He'd stopped keeping track around the time he'd finally stopped looking over his shoulder. At the time, leaving had seemed too good to be true. He'd spent months feeling like he was half a step ahead of some nameless specter; like if he let his guard down, even for a second, whatever it was would drag him right back where he'd come from. — Laura Oliva

The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:
The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.
The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to. — Walker Percy

Many partners of addicts have told me they feel bad about themselves for staying in the relationship because of the betrayal they've experienced. They imagine that the people who know their past judge them to be stupid for staying with the person who's caused them so much pain. I often counter this thinking, explaining that leaving may seem quick and easy because they can pretend they're okay and the problem has disappeared. However, if you leave your relationship, you'll be stuck with your pain and sorrow without the person you loved to help you sort it out. Why is this true? Because even though it feels as if your pain comes from your partner, it's actually coming from inside you. — Alexandra Katehakis

You think such an attitude is admirable. Manly, heroic even. 'Lived harmlessly.' 'Kept to himself.' Hide away somewhere and your past will cease to exist. You won't have to account for it. You'll feel no obligation to explain your actions or justify them because you've gone away and you expect your victims to go away too. It's like leaving the scene of an accident . . . Or a marriage. Even a field of battle. — Ward Just

There is a relative order to the fossilized species of plants found in the geologic record for which Flood Geology cannot account, unless you can imagine apple and orange trees with Nike sneakers on their roots, racing past the magnolias and primitive mammals, leaving the ginkgoes back there with the dinosaurs when the Flood waters began to rise. — Frank Zindler

I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind. — Nelson Mandela

Please follow the counsel you have been given in the past and maintain your personal journals. Those who keep a book of remembrance are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives. Journals are a way of counting our blessings and of leaving an inventory of these blessings for our posterity. — Spencer W. Kimball

Dasha introduced Alexander to Marina. They shook hands and both stared at each other for longer than was appropriate. Marina, embarrassed, stepped away, averting her gaze. Alexander smiled, putting his arm around Dasha. "Dasha," he said, "so this is your cousin Marina." Tatiana wanted to shake her head at him, while a perplexed Marina remained speechless. Later on in the kitchen, Marina said to Tatiana, "Tania, why did Dasha's Alexander look at me as if he knew me?" "I have no idea." "He is adorable." "You think so?" said Dasha, who was heading past the girls to the bathroom, leaving Alexander in the corridor. "Well, keep your hands off him," she added cheerfully. "He's mine." "Don't you think?" Marina whispered to Tatiana. "He's all right," said Tatiana. "Help me wash this frying pan, will you?" Adorable Alexander stood in the doorway, smoking and grinning at Tatiana. — Paullina Simons

When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave. — John Cage

He held the door open for me and I walked past him, leaving my conscience on the porch. It curled up next to my principles. — Janice Hardy

The early removal from school of future officers of Britain's seapower, leaving them unacquainted with the subject matter and ideas of the distant and recent past, may account for the incapacity of no military thinking in a world that devoted itself to military action. With little thought of strategy, no study of the theory of war or of planned objective, war's glorious art may have been glorious, but with individual exceptions, it was more or less mindless. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Next year, when you return, you'll bring the ashes back and toss them onto that year's bonfire. In this way, each of us comes back to this place, bringing some of the past, leaving with some of the future. — Lurlene McDaniel

As he plods behind Cameron and Summer, he can't help but stare at Summer's exposed, glistening skin. His thoughts aren't depraved or even mildly in the splasher. In fact, he focuses on the marks of cruelty crisscrossing her back, stomach, and shoulders. He trudges along, drenched, feet swollen, constantly searching for even a hint of a breeze, all while being forced to stare at the alarming network of burns traversing Summer's delicate skin. This latticework of hate reveals a brutal truth - one he can scarcely comprehend. Yes, he's glimpsed and felt her scars before, but this is the first time he's really, truly seen the severity and extent of her life as a slave. With each step, he must digest the monstrosities of her past, leaving him utterly devastated. — Laura Kreitzer

Him aloof or cold, only shy and on occasion melancholy. Some felt that perhaps in his past lay a tragedy with which he had never been able to make his peace, that the only companion with which he felt comfortable was sorrow. Amalia was somewhat distressed. "Somebody should have cleaned up these dishes and emptied the refrigerator before things in it spoiled. Leaving it like this ... it's just wrong." I shrugged. "Maybe no one cared about him." My sister seemed to care about everyone, even making excuses for our parents at their — Dean Koontz

To move foward, you have to leave the past behind — Susannah Cahalan

The justification I hear more often than any other for leaving the Bible behind is that "everyone knows" it is antiquated and full of scientific nonsense, if not blatant errors and contradictions. Amazingly, when I ask people to cite examples, many cannot bring to mind even one. Apparently, they base their opinion on hearsay and repeat a widespread misconception. Among those who do answer my question, one Bible portion draws more vigorous attack than all others combined: the first few chapters of Genesis. This attack opens a wonderful door of opportunity for me - and for every believer who knows something about the scientific discoveries of the past few decades. Instead of offering an excuse for disbelief and rejection, these chapters present some of the most persuasive evidences ever assembled for the supernatural authorship, accuracy, and authority of the Bible. — Hugh Ross

Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days - whatever there may be for the dust - the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence. — Lord Byron

Being with my family and loved ones makes me feel vulnerable. Speaking my truth and then being that in action. Leaving my comfort zone but knowing that risk is going to create something beautiful. I believe I have come to good terms with my vulnerability. I welcome it now, where I didn't in the past. — Dash Mihok

Dalhia," he says, his tone is as dark and sad as the place I have lived for the past two years before meeting him. "One day, if you change your mind . . . just know you'll always be my once in a lifetime."
He presses kisses to my forehead and nose, then turns, leaving me at the front door to the house I shared with Ben for so many years. The house that is now empty is the house where, once again, I will be alone. — Kim Karr

The Librarian swung on. It was slow progress, because there were things he wasn't keen on meeting. Creatures evolved to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures.
Usually he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small literary criticism. And there were other things, things which he hurried away from and tried not to look hard at ...
And you had to avoid cliches at all costs. — Terry Pratchett

I wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been ... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible. — Dorothy Allison

we have a Gene-IE to grant us wishes," he said. Darlene brushed past in her white coat. To my surprise, Eliza was at the computer desk behind the lab door and looked up at me. "You took your time," she said with a glint in her green eyes. "Leaving us to do all the work." I had an overwhelming urge to hug her, which I didn't fight. She responded very tightly, then slowly broke away. "What are you doing standing — James Patterson

Wave bye-bye to your cash cow, 'cause it's leaving the pasture. — Jimmy McGill

Having lived my entire life in the wake of Forsyth's racial cleansing. I wanted to begin reversing its communal act of erasure by learning as much as I could about the lost people and places of black Forsyth. I was determined to document more than just that the expulsions occurred: I wanted to know where, when, how, and to whom.

It was then I set myself the task of finding out what really happened - not because the truth is an adequate remedy for the past, and not because it can undo what was done. Instead, I wanted to honor the dead by leaving a fuller account of what they endured and all that they and their descendants lost. — Patrick Phillips

She used to imagine her parents and happy endings she would never have. Now she envisioned torments that were all too real.
She pictured one of Cinderella's stepsisters planting her foot on a cutting board - and biting down hard as the cleaver chopped through the bone of her big toe.
She imagined a princess used to safety, luxury, throwing the rank hide of a donkey over her shoulders, its boneless face drooping past her forehead like a hideous veil.
And she imagined her future self, flat on her back in bed, limbs as heavy as if they'd been chained down. Mice scurried across her body, leaving footprints on her dress. Spiders spun an entire trousseau's worth of silk and draped her in it, so it appeared she wore a gown of the finest lace, adorned with rose petals and ensnared butterflies. Beetles nestled between her fingers like jeweled rings - lovely from a distance, horrific up close. — Sarah Cross

It's very expressive of myself. I just lump everything into a great heap which I have labelled "the past" and, having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.'
They sat together in the pleasant gloom of late afternoon, staring at each other through the remains of the party; the silver glasses, the silver tray, the traces of many perfumes; they sat together watching the twilight flow through the calm living room that they were leaving like the clear cold current of a trout stream. — Zelda Fitzgerald

How could he explain it in a way Leslie would understand, how he yearned to reach out and capture the quivering life about him and how when he tried, it slipped past his fingertips, leaving a dry fossil upon the page? — Katherine Paterson

Cash misses his wife with a blank pain in his chest, and he misses his sisters and cousins, who have known him since he was a strong, good-looking boy. Everyone back there remembers, or if they are too young, they've been told. The old ones get to hang on the sweet, perfect past. Cash was the best at climbing trees; his sister Letty won the story bees. The woman who married Letty's husband's brother, a beauty named Sugar, was spotted one time drinking a root beer and had her picture in LIFE magazine. They all know. Now she has thin hair and a humped back but she's still Sugar, she gets to walk around Heaven, Oklahoma, with everybody thinking she's pretty and special. which she is. That's the trouble with moving away from family, he realizes. You lose your youth entirely, you have only the small tired baggage that is carried within the body. — Barbara Kingsolver

Over the past two decades, the boundary between photography and other media like painting, sculpture, or performance has become increasingly porous. It would seem that each medium has absorbed the other, leaving the photographic residing everywhere, but nowhere in particular. — Geoffrey Batchen

One of my favorite feelings is the sense I get from pouring over parts of my past before lighting them up and leaving it all behind me to start over again. — Madi Diaz

From the standpoint of the upper classes, the system had many merits. They felt that what was paid out of the poor rate was charity, and therefore a proof of their benevolence; at the same time, wages were kept at starvation level by a method which just prevented discontent from developing into revolution ... It was plainly the certainty, derived from the old Poor Law, that actual death would be averted by the parish authorities, which induced the rural poor of England to endure their misery patiently ... it taught them respect for their 'betters'.While leaving all the wealth that they produced, beyond the absolute minimum required for subsistence, in the hands of the landowners and farmers. It was at this period that landowners built the sham Gothic ruins called 'follies', where they indulged in romantic sensibility about the past while they filled the present with misery and degradation. — Bertrand Russell

I realize I have stopped thinking about political divides, about freedom fighters or terrorists, about dictators and armies. I am thinking only of the fragility of civilization. The lives the refugees had were our lives: they owned corner shops and sold cars, they farmed or worked in factories or owned factories or sold insurance. None of them expected to be running for their lives, leaving everything they had because they had nothing to come back to, making smuggled border crossings, walking past the dismembered corpses of other people who had tried to make the crossing but had been caught or been betrayed. — Neil Gaiman

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word
the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again. — Philip Larkin

Not watching the path where his legs took him, he walked on because he knew he had to walk ahead, leaving his past behind. — Faraaz Kazi

All my life I have been trained by that siren. Before I could walk I knew the siren meant death. It meant somehow the fences had been breached and the Unconsecrated were shuffling among us. It meant grab weapons, move to the platforms and pull up the ladders - even if it necessitated leaving the living behind.
Growing up, my mother used to tell me about how in the beginning, when her own great-great-great-grandmother was a child, that siren would wail almost constantly as the village was bombarded with the Unconsecrated. But then the fences has been fortified, the Guardians had formed and time had passed with the Unconsecrated dwindling to the point that I couldn't remember a time in the past few years when that siren had wailed and it had not been a drill. I know that in my life there have been breaches but I also know that I am very good at blocking out the memories that serve me no purpose. I can fear the Unconsecrated well enough without them. — Carrie Ryan

If an object - a star, for instance, like our own sun - is eight hundred light years away from the Earth, it would take light leaving that object eight hundred years until it reached our eyes. So when you look at that object, you are seeing it as it appeared eight hundred light years ago, not as it looks today. It might not even exist anymore. Every time you look up at the stars, you are looking into the past. — Wendy Mass

You gotta keep things moving. If leaving behind the past means you can have a better future, then, sure, why not? — Lisa Mangum