Visiting The Past Quotes & Sayings

So you weren't in college."
"I wasn't, no." She takes another sip. "Your father was though. He was visiting for spring break. I mugged him."
"You what?"
"You have to understand I didn't make very much money, even with two jobs. It hardly even paid for my food. I couldn't fish, because-"
"You didn't want anyone to sense you in the water." Otherwise, she could have been pretty self-sufficient.
She nods. "So one day I see this group of cocky college students, spending money left and right. Pulling wads of cash out of their pockets to pay for small purchases, like ice cream." She rolls her eyes. "They were flashing it. They wanted people to know they were rich."
"Doesn't mean they wanted people to mug them," I mutter. — Anna Banks

Fitz's door was closed, so she knocked before going in.
"I told you, Mr. Snuggles's visiting hours are over," he called through the door.
"What about your visiting hours?" she asked.
"Oh! I thought you were Keefe."
Sophie opened the door. "I get that a lot. — Shannon Messenger

When you move on in life, you always leave behind some things- some myths and some mysteries, that cannot be fathomed by the heart, without going back to the past and visiting yourself again; in that time, at that place. You can only understand such things and solve such riddles if, in your imagination, you can live the life again and be in that place again, where you left a part of you. — Q.M. Sidd

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom. — Francis Bacon

I spend a lot of time visiting local organisations. — Diane Abbott

The notion of a country cottage settled in her thoughts as a watercolor, red bricks, climbing roses, the house the most intelligent of the three little pigs built, but with some age on it now; and the place they found in western Massachusetts wasn't far off, solid enough to withstand huffs and puffs, small enough to feel manageable, large enough to hold visiting grandchildren, old enough to inspire optimism about what might, improbably, endure. — Robin Black

The angels started visiting and helping me as far back as I can remember. I was lonely a lot in my childhood and the angels would come and comfort me, and help me to feel better, and at the same time they would also take me to places. I literally mean they would take me on a journey and tell me things. — Doreen Virtue

Today, as young French and Dutch Muslims wander through Upper Manhattan and Chicago's South Side, it's not uncommon to see European politicians, journalists, and activists in those same urban areas, visiting mosques and community centers trying to identify "best practices" they can take back home. — Hisham D. Aidi

The past is not a place I like to visit. This project is forcing me to go there, to tidy up my thoughts. I'm not normally a navel-gazer. I've always thought you find yourself in other people. I'm visiting here. I don't want to set up house. — Bono

Visiting a dying son - The seductive whirlpool of memory I — Ruth Hull Chatlien

That was it. She came out of it. She never had such a down as that or such an up as the three days that preceded it, not ever again in her life. The rest of her life was like a long thin line with little diminuendos and tiny little crescendos, and friends visiting from out of town. — Sheila Heti

I could tell you that the past is the past, and nothing has any consequence, and I'm tired of a life where nothing I do has any meaning for anything more than myself, and that over the years I've grown numb inside, hollow and empty, and I drift from situation to situation like a ghost visiting an old graveside in search of an explanation of how he died, and in my search I have found nothing. Nothing that makes any sense. — Claire North

Thwart," I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person."
"I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition." Sarissa said.
"It is today. — Jim Butcher

Titus, operating under the terms of the more modest package that he had negotiated with Gwen, which included room, board, and at the end of his own Candy Land path, the ambiguous pink-frosting-roofed gingerbread house of a family to love him and fuck him up, instantly got out of the car, observed the agreed-upon conventions of civilized intercourse among strangers, and got back into the car. The boy was still visiting their planet from his own faraway home world, but Archy figured that with time, he would adjust to the local gravity and microbes. Keeping close to the baby most of the time, as if Clark were the object he had crossed the stellar void to study. — Michael Chabon

I cast a look at where Rhys still remained sprawled on the cushions, watching us with raised brows. "For someone who was just dead," I said tightly, "you seem remarkably relaxed."

Rhys smirked. "I'm glad you're bouncing back to your usual spirits, Feyre darling."

Drakon snorted, and took my hands, squeezing them as tightly as his mate had. "What he doesn't want to tell you, my lady, is that he's so damn old he can't stand up right now."

I whirled to Rhys. "Are you - "

"Fine, fine," Rhys said, waving a hand, even as he groaned a bit. "Though perhaps now you see why I didn't bother visiting these two for so long. They're terribly cruel to me. — Sarah J. Maas

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I spend more time being what I am: a writer, not the visiting celebrity. — Jerry Spinelli

Is it necessary, do you think,' he began, leaning in so close behind me that I could smell his breath, 'for the purpose of visiting your grandmother's childhood home, to dress like a kindergarten whore? — Danielle Wood

Was there ever an aerial war in our distant past, maybe 2,000 years ago? An aerial war? Yes. There are certain understandings, what you would call treaties between various visiting civilizations, specifying how they are to conduct themselves in contact with humans. Those that did not have the best intentions for Earth applied certain arrangements and pressures to certain civilizations. These aspirations were restrained to create a reasonably safe and neutral area of space that includes Earth and many other planets. This might be what you call aerial warfare. That is probably it. The reference comes from very old writings in India and a description of ships in the sky, fighting. I understand the Hindu texts. They give insights into the background of a number of civilizations that have come to Earth. These Indian texts have many clear insights and provide early information on contact with humans. — J. Steven Reichmuth

To be honest, your crap fascinates me. Having you here is like visiting a foreign land. — Samanthe Beck

Percy stared at his jelly donut. He had a rocky history with Nico di Angelo. The guy had once tricked him into visiting Hades's palace, and Percy had ended up in a cell. But most of the time, Nico sided with the good guys. He certainly didn't deserve slow suffocation in a bronze jar, and Percy couldn't stand seeing Hazel in pain.
"We'll rescue him," he promised her. "We have to. The prophecy says he holds the key to endless death. — Rick Riordan

Visiting the past is something like visiting a foreign country: they do some things the same and some things differently, but above all else, they make us more aware of what we call 'home. — John Arnold

Sometimes I suspected Ryan was merely visiting the real world, on vacation from his permanent residence in la-la land. — Rachel Vincent

I never make a trip to the United States without visiting a supermarket. To me they are more fascinating than any fashion salon. — Wallis Simpson

I remembered a friend of mine dying from AIDS, and while he was visiting his family on the coast for the last time, he was seated in the grass during a picnic to which dozens of family members were invited. He looked up from his fried chicken and said, "I just want to die with a big dick in my mouth. — David Wojnarowicz

I don't like regressing - I move beyond. Life belongs to the future and I believe in creating History rather than visiting and revisiting the past. — Amit Abraham

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

As I'm sure you know, whenever you are examine someone else's belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware. You might examine some letters you sister received recently, for instance, and learn that she was planning on running away with an archduke. You might examine the suitcase of another passenger on a train you are taking, and learn that he had been secretly photographing you for the past six months. I recently looked in the refrigerator of one of my enemies and learned she was a vegetarian, or at least pretending to be one, or had a vegetarian visiting her for a few days. And as the Baudelaire orphans examined some of the objets in Olaf's trunk, they learned a great deal of unpleasant things. — Lemony Snicket

The heat of the day had long since retreated into the desert, and the city, which had drowsed through the hot afternoon, was finally coming alive. The streets filled with people drinking tea and gossiping, laughing, and visiting friends. Old men played chatrang on boards set up outside cafes; children stayed up long past their bedtimes playing their own games on the sidewalks. Men and women bought rose-flavored ices and trinkets from nighttime vendors. — Liz Braswell

I put on slight music I could ignore and started to write. The type of this music I most favored they no longer made. Turns out they asked around one day and I was the only one enjoying it so they decided to just stop making it. Most of the bands that were making the music when this decision was made simply disappeared and got real jobs, the ones that survived made different music that appealed to more people. The result was that when I listened to that music it felt a bit like travelling to the past or visiting ghosts, and this despite the undeniable fact that a very healthy portion of the music I listened to otherwise was created a far longer time ago, by people long-departed, yet produced no similar feelings. — Sergio De La Pava

A poor old man held the winning ticket on a half million dollar lottery. Hearing the old man might be surprised at the shock, the local pastor was asked to break the news gradually. The pastor made a customary call, and while visiting casually asked the old man what he would do with a half million dollars if he had it. The old man replied, "why, I'd give half of it to you." Whereupon the pastor dropped dead. — Art Linkletter

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you. — Bret Easton Ellis

Hardly unaware of his image, Bradlee even cultivated it. He delighted in displaying his street savvy, telling a reporter to get his ass moving and talk to some real cops, not lieutenants and captains behind a desk; then rising to greet some visiting dignitary from Le Monde or L'Express in formal, flawless French, complete with a peck on each cheek.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed. — Lewis Gannett

To be an ideal guest, stay at home. — E.W. Howe

In a Ramada Inn near the grapevine, they stop to rest for the night. Traveling down south, looking for good times. Visiting old friends feels right. — Neil Young

In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen. — Nicole Mones

I suppose that, after visiting the curious coasts of Arabia and Egypt, the Nautilus will go down the Indian Ocean again, perhaps cross the Channel of Mozambique, perhaps off the Mascarenhas, so as to gain the Cape of Good Hope. — Jules Verne

You never know what to expect when you're a writer visiting a movie set. — Bryan Burrough

I enjoy visiting building sites. Unlike the ordered anonymity of office bureaucracy or the featureless regularity of a factory assembly line, a building site appears disorderly and chaotic. In fact, there is organization, but it is a loose orchestration of many separate trademen, working side by side but not necessarily together. — Witold Rybczynski

I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It's there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter. — Peter Doig

It was amusing, in such lightness of air, that the Prince should again present himself only to speak for the Princess, so unfortunately unable again to leave home; and that Mrs Verver should as regularly figure as an embodied, a beautifully deprecating apology for her husband, who was all geniality and humility among his own treasures, but as to whom the legend had grown up that he couldn't bear, with the height of his standards and the tone of the company, in the way of sofas and cabinets, habitually kept by him, the irritation and depression to which promiscuous visiting, even at pompous houses, had been found to expose him. — Henry James

A cigar makers organization once said that I was the most famous cigar smoker in the world. I dont know if thats true, but once while visiting Havana, I went to a cigar factory. There were four hundred people there rolling cigars, and when they saw me, they all stood up and applauded. — Groucho Marx

There are several GREAT places to buy books while visiting in Cherry Hill Pennsylvania — Ida Mingle

The peculiar idea that bigger is better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's always bothered me. There is within it the implication that it is more difficult for God to care about a gnat than about a galaxy. Creation is just as visible in a grain of sand as in a skyful of stars.
The church is not immune from the bigger-is-better heresy. One woman told of going to a meeting where only a handful of people turned out, and these faithful few were scolded by the visiting preacher for the sparseness of the congregation. And she said indignantly, 'Our Lord said *feed* my sheep, not count them!' I often feel that I'm being counted, rather than fed, and so I am hungry. — Madeleine L'Engle

Have to love the preemptive guilt trip! I will be visiting home for Mother's Day. Hoping for minimal "baby cannon" talk, but realistically that's going to be a big part of the day. — Kate Siegel

Gotten a good look at her face. But they didn't recognize her as Stark's cohort. They must not have been big on reading blogs or watching the news. Deirdre took the camera. "Sure. Where's the button?" He quickly showed her how to operate it, and Deirdre stepped back to get both of them in the frame. The camera had a telephoto lens. She aimed it at the top of the building, zooming in so that she could look at the skeletal upper levels, where they were preparing to moor a visiting dirigible. With such fantastic zoom, she could see that there were OPA guards in black suits waiting to receive the airship. — S.M. Reine

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting. — Grant Morrison

I'm afraid that the gift of visiting the past is all that we have. We can revisit it, but only as it happened. — Karen Essex

But I like going to church. If you've been brought up in the Church of England, it feels like visiting an elderly relative. And I think it's important that part of the kids' education is knowing about the Bible. — Jack Dee

A day doesn't go by when I don't look at them, she said. I can't have them up on the kitchen refrigerator or in a frame in the bedroom
I just can't do it, I just can't run into them casually when I'm supposed to be doing something else
but I also can't last a day without seeing them. Visiting with them when I am alone in the house. — Chris Bohjalian

You take one last look and think it would have been something to climb that silo and peek out the window before the interstate plowed through. To see the land unbroken. You are compelled, of course, to consider how the Ojibwe felt, returning to the campsites at Cotter Creek one day only to hear the sound of sawing and the lowing of oxen. Life will circle around on you. Also visible from the silo window is a gigantic billboard pointed at the interstate and advertising a casino owned by the Ojibwe. The billboard says, WINNERS, 24/7. — Michael Perry

It's always sort of amazing, sitting in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone. — Patrick Cockburn

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because 'God' is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, 'God' is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. Each of us projects our limited experience on a cosmic screen in letters as big as our minds can fashion. For those whose vision is constricted (illiberal, narrow-minded people), this can have horrific consequences. But others respond to the munificence of creation with broad imagination and sympathy. Answering to the highest and best within and beyond themselves, they draw lessons and fathom meaning so redemptive that surely it touches the divine. — Forrest Church

Since the tragedy of Marina's death, her parents have heard from strangers around the globe surprised to find themselves writing to share the impact of "meeting" Marina through her words: Jewish teenagers visiting a series of concentration camps while on "The March of the Living" and finding specific comfort and renewed purpose in her writings; college peers living more mindfully; musicians writing songs inspired by her; older readers making midlife recalibrations and career changes, whether they are returning to school or shifting to a nonprofit or finishing that manuscript; people simply rediscovering a sense of hope. These new life paths all build from Marina's own sense that it's never too late to change, that we must take action, that we are indeed "in this together. — Marina Keegan

HAD TO GO to America for a while to give some talks. Going to America always does me good. It's where I'm from, after all. There's baseball on the TV, people are friendly and upbeat, they don't obsess about the weather except when there is weather worth obsessing about, you can have all the ice cubes you want. Above all, visiting America gives me perspective. Consider — Bill Bryson