You My Past Quotes & Sayings

You should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun ... My family's habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future? — Stephen L. Carter

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

We all have a jacked up past, all of us. You aren't special because you've been fucked over. Do you know how much I would love to have someone solid to share my life with? — Harper Sloan

If a working class Englishman saw a bloke drive past in a Rolls-Royce, he'd say to himself "Come the social revolution and we'll take that away from you, mate". Whereas if his American counterpart saw a bloke drive past in a Cadillac he'd say "One day I'm going to own one of those". To my way of thinking the first attitude is wrong. The latter is right. — Kerry Packer

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

The good news is that you may have created my past and screwed up my present, but you havce no control over my future. You don't know me at all. — David Klass

But suppose it past, - suppose one of these men, as I have seen them meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame ; suppose this man surrounded by those children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault than he can no longer so support; suppose this man - and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your victims, - dragged into court to be tried for this new offence, by this new law, - still there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him, and these are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jefferies for a judge! — George Gordon Byron

This isn't happening to you, princess," Sabine snapped before I could do more than shake my head. "This is happening to us. While you spent the past few months prancing around in ignorant bliss, we were all being possessed, or kidnapped, or stalked by this hellion. So dry your tears and take off the tiara, because this is a call to arms, not a pity party. You're not going to find any sympathy here. — Rachel Vincent

I need some space."
"Because of my past?"
"No, because of mine. When I'm around you I feel like I'm falling. I need to stop before I smash into the ground."
"Are you always so honest?"
"No. Mostly I'm a liar like you. — Anna McPartlin

As a lady of clocklike precision yourself, you may appreciate my schedule. I have kept strictly to it every day for the past decade. From eight in the morning to eight in the evening, I devote myself to my duties. Then from eight in the evening to eight in the morning, I . . . do . . . not. — Erica Ridley

But how? How can you just get over these things, darling? ... You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it?'
'I choose to ... I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.'
'But it's not that easy.'
He smiled that Frank smile. 'Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No' - his voice became sober- 'we always have a choice. All of us.' p.323 — M.L. Stedman

My dad was always busy. You would pop round for a cup of tea, and within minutes you would see him walking past with a step-ladder. He was always fixing things. — Rachel Joyce

We've worn our words to death,
when now I say: my love,
nothing happens, absolutely nothing.
And yet, before the words were spent,
I'm certain
that everything trembled
at the mere murmur of your name
in the silence of my heart.
Now we have nothing to give.
There is nothing within you
that asks me for water.
The past is useless as a rag.
And I've told you already: the words are spent.
Good-bye. — Eugenio De Andrade

What did you learn?"
"Letting go of my past, because it's all soot, nothing is left
of it, if I wandered there for long I would be running in circles
in the dark, no hope, no life. And if I chose to live in those
places rebuilt from ashes, I can never get rid of the darkness
which would prevail underneath."
"The present is my ray of hope. I could have stayed there,
complaining about the gloominess of the light, and regretting
not having turned a corner to explore a new horizon at the same
time I needed to respect that light because it was my savior from
the dark. I learnt it finally and that's why I reached here today
and found you — Dixy Gandhi

Barrons Books and Baubles had been ransacked!

Tables were overturned, books torn from shelves and strewn everywhere, baubles broken. Even my little TV behind the counter had been destroyed.

"Barrons?" I called warily. It was night and the lights were on. My illusory Alina had told me more than an hour had passed. Was it the same night, nearly dawn? Or was it the night following our theft attempt? Had Barrons come back from Wales yet? Or was he still there, searching for me? When I'd been so rudely ripped from reality, who or what had come through those basement doors?

I heard footsteps, boots on hardwood, and turned expectantly toward the connecting doors.

Barrons was framed in the doorway. His eyes were black ice. He stared at me a moment, raking me from head to toe. "Nice tan, Ms. Lane. So, where the fuck have you been for the past month? — Karen Marie Moning

Just because you know it [my past]... doesn't mean that my wounds are a weight you have to carry.
~Kurogane-san — CLAMP

As a result of things that may have happened in their past, women seem to find it hard to trust anybody. They are so worried that people will somehow dislike them if they have the courage to be themselves. They are convinced by society's idea that you have to be thin to be beautiful. But you know what, my sister? You're beautiful just as you are! — Corallie Buchanan

I disappear for twenty minutes into Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier while John does the dishes, fighting past my initial irritation all the class nonsense and how no one will say anything of significance because it's simply not done to be explicit. Like in James or Wharton. Those novels where you're screaming at characters to go ahead already and blurt it out, save us a hundred pages of prevarication. — Adam Haslett

MY HEALTH SELF-ASSESSMENT 1. Do you feel that your health has gotten worse over the past two years? — Jeffrey S. Bland

To be a comedian, you have to have some darkness behind it. I certainly draw on my past, and it helps. — Matthew Perry

I didn't ask him "why did you bite?" since "why" was a word that shouldn't be used with foster kids. "Why" brought up a bucket-load of garbage from the past that most of them didn't want to share and the rest of us didn't want to hear. Simple commands were best. "Don't bite," I stressed again, my voice kinder this time. — Kate Kae Myers

I can't undo the past. But in the future, I will gladly lay my life down for you, brother. (Styxx) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Why do you hate me?"
"I have no emotion about you at all, Mac. I take care of my own. You are not my own." He moved past me, pressed his palm to the door, and stood waiting for me to exit. "Barrons wants you to see your parents so as you go about your business you will remember they are here. With me."
"Lovely," I muttered.
"I suffer them to live, against my better judgment, as a favor to Barrons. He's running out of favors. Remember that. — Karen Marie Moning

Ah, yes, choice. I chose to let my ghosts stay in past. Past is history you know. Living is now. I sat. I breathed. I let past go. I let future go. I am. That is all. — Natalie Wright

I don't want to talk about those things. I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry ... to have you here gives me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these ... people.
[laughs] — Paul Thomas Anderson

I am madly, ridiculously, passionately in love with you. I don't care about your past. Your race does nothing to change my feelings. I love you, you stubborn little fool. Is that clear enough for you? — Y.S. Lee

At that stage of your life, there'll be no past or future for you; until I give you my breast, you'll have no memory of contentment in the past nor expectation of relief in the future. Once you begin nursing, everything will be in reverse, and all will be right with the world. NOW is the only moment you'll perceive; you'll live in the present tense. In many ways, it's an enviable state. — Ted Chiang

Why me?" she finally asked.
Sighing, I touched the end of her hair, fingering it slightly. It felt so silky. "You were the first person I saw at this school. I'd parked in the lot and was walking past the auditorium and saw this gorgeous girl come out of the music room. The sun hit your stunning red hair, and it shone so brightly it almost looked like you had a halo. You were staring down at some music you were holding, and you started humming something. I froze. I just stood there and watched you walk by. You were so engrossed you didn't even notice me." I twisted the loop of her hair around my finger. — Lacey Weatherford

I've noticed over the past years of my writerly life that women writers in particular are discouraged in cleverly disguised forms from including the intellectual in their creative material way more than you would believe. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I want you to be happy. I want to do my job so that you can move past this divorce and have a chance at normality. — Alessandra Torre

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don't mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus? I've been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to write Die Empty. Through my work I've encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point "settled in" or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, — Todd Henry

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human ... We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom. — Albert Schweitzer

We have a history," I say, "that no one can take from us. No matter what happened in the past, no matter what happens from here, it can't take away from the good thing we had. You were my first love, Demi. You only get one. — Winter Renshaw

My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball. — David Duchovny

Thoreau has been my companion for some days past, it having struck me as
more appropriate to bring him out to a pond than to read him, as was
hitherto my habit, on Sunday mornings in the garden. He is a person who
loves the open air, and will refuse to give you much pleasure if you try
to read him amid the pomp and circumstance of upholstery; but out in the
sun, and especially by this pond, he is delightful, and we spend the
happiest hours together, he making statements, and I either agreeing
heartily, or just laughing and reserving my opinion till I shall have
more ripely considered the thing. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

You know I find surprises vulgar," Lady Kent said, waving her hand dismissively and shifting her gaze to me. "You are acquainted with Miss Madeline Verinder, I presume?"

"Good evening, Miss Verinder," I said, exchanging curtsies with the sweetest, gentlest, most accomplished, and most amiable girl in all of London. At least that is what I had continually repeated to myself the past season, so I wouldn't slap her by sheer reflex whenever she entered my conversations with Mr. Kent and turned them into competitions for his attention. — Tarun Shanker

Everybody's got skeletons in the closets. Every once in a while, you've got to open up the closet and the let the skeletons breathe. Half the time, the very thing you think is gonna destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to people with skeletons is to dust them off every now and then
as long as your closet's aint full of them. It's not good to have more than two or three. — Tyler Perry

Nine times out of ten, failure is resorting to Plan B when Plan A gets too risky, too costly, or too difficult. That's why most people are living their Plan B. They didn't burn the ships. Plan A people don't have a Plan B...

There are moments in life when we need to burn the ships to our past. We do so by making a defining decision that will eliminate the possibility of sailing back to the old world we left behind. You burn the ships named Past Failure and Past Success. You burn the ship named Bad Habit. You burn the ship named Regret. You burn the ship named Guilt. You burn the ship named My Old Way of Life. — Mark Batterson

What you see is what you see, but that is never everything. Sarajavo is Sarajevo whatever you see or don't see. America is America. The past and future exist without you. And what you don't know about me is still my life. What I don't know about you is still your life. Nothing at all depends on you seeing it or not seeing it. I mean, who are you? You don't have to see or know everything. — Aleksandar Hemon

You forgive me?" he asked, trailing hot kisses down my neck.
"Yes. But don't do it again. And don't stop kissing me."
"Got it. Let me apologize to you properly. Let me kiss you between the legs." Strong hands cupped my ass, pressing me against his erection. "I wanna lick you, Lena."
"You like doing that, don't you?" I asked, a little amazed. Past boyfriends had not rated the experience highly.
"Fuck yes. I love having you squirming against my face, rubbing your pussy on me. — Kylie Scott

Are you the one named Alyse? For he calls that name in his sleep."
"No, that is his beloved sister, dead these past three years." The depth of my disappointment that it is not my name he calls takes me completely by surprise.
"Ah," the old nun says sympathetically, as if she somehow knows what I am feeling. "Then perhaps you are Sybella. That is the name he asks for when he is awake. — R.L. LaFevers

I keep saying that backwards is all you can see. You can't see front. My wife says, "Stop, you're always in the past." She sees me sort of daydreaming. — Tom Courtenay

But I keep the kid in my heart, you know, and once in a while she gets out. It's a writer thing. The past is material. You never want to forget it, how it was, how it felt. Nurse — Dean Koontz

In the past, love for me has always meant forever, and sure, you still nurse some of those fantasies, but I don't try to force it anymore. I hung on to my fairy-tale ideals for a long time. But where I am now, what I've been through, there are no rules. There are lots of ways it can turn out instead of just one. There are so many different kinds of happiness, not just the one you learned about when you were 5 years old. — Jennifer Lopez

And I tell you what, L.J.; you see all these people you haven't seen for twenty years, and there's this split second when you meet somebody you used to know, and you think 'My God, he's changed!,'and then all of a sudden, he hasn't- it's just like the twenty years weren't there, I mean" he rubbed his head vigorously, struggling for meaning
"you see they've got some gray, and some lines, and maybe they aren't just the same as they were, but two minutes past that shock, and you don't see it anymore. They are just the same people they always were, and you have to make yourself stand back a ways to see that they aren't eighteen anymore — Diana Gabaldon

You are my life. It doesn't matter what I am, or what I've done, as long as you're mine. Nothing in the past matters. There is you, and nothing else." He didn't look at me but kept his eyes on his work. A cluster of taller buildings appeared ahead, and he headed for them. "My one job," he said, holding up a finger, "is to make sure you know how to protect yourself when they finally kill me. — C.D. Reiss

Just remember, please, most of that stuff is in the past. It isn't the story I want to tell. At all.
You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I'm choosing my own story.
Because if you can't do that, you might as well just give up. — Patrick Ness

I'll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past ... — Tom Waits

am an Addict's Mom. I am an Addict's Mom. I stand before you able to state without hesitation that Yes, I am an addict's mom. I have learned to look past those judgmental stares, sensing what you are thinking, that I must be "one of those Moms." That somewhere, somehow, I made some horrific choices that sent my child into the depths of hell. I am here to tell you that the choices my child made are his own and his alone. This nightmare is far from what I wanted for my child. Just like everyone with children, there were big dreams and hopes for my child. — Joe Herzanek

You're my past, my present, and my future. You're my life, Anna. I love you. — Samantha Chase

Then Kotick roared to the seals: I've done my best for you these five seasons past. I've found you the island where you'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks you won't believe. I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves! — Rudyard Kipling

We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution
it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad
peace be upon Him!
tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be. — Zadie Smith

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film. — Ken Loach

I sometimes worried I'd never experience that sense of wonder you feel meeting a new friend or traveling to a new place for the first time. I was afraid the major milestones of my life, marriage and childbirth, were past. Was it foolish to hope I still had something exciting ahead of me, something even important, that I could have a life of my own? — Lilly Ledbetter

... The other half wanted to say, I love you, come away with me, sit on my knee, I'll always remember you. You so full of your past, me so full of my future. — Julian Barnes

Dear Lord, I pray You would help me to have strong faith to believe You will do great things in response to my prayers. Your Word tells of the magnificent and miraculous things You have done for people, and I know You are the same today and in the future as You were in the past. I believe You can do magnificent and miraculous things in response to my prayers as well. — Stormie O'martian

I think it really takes about 15-20 selfies that someone takes on their phone before they post the right one. There was this selfie that I took where I was wearing a white bathing suit, and it was after I had the baby, and it was a sexy pic. It took about 15 pictures to get the one that I posted. So you'll see all the ones that didn't make it. And you'll see all my selfies from the past years, including my first-ever selfie when I was four years old. — Kim Kardashian

When his hand came down across my bottom the first time I thought I was going to die. But the pain passed, transmuted as if my some alchemical wizardry, and for a moment I experienced a surreal satisfaction in being bent over in this way without rights or choices, past or future. In pain you are living in the present and as the pain passes there is pleasure from having endured the pain. — Chloe Thurlow

The success that comes from my books is not something I feel very comfortable with. Past a certain point you have to accept the idea that the success is a lot to do with the timing and luck and that divorces you from it massively. There are aspects of it that I haven't got used to at all. But I've enjoyed some parts of it massively. It relates to the same reason I did a lot of backpacking - partly for the experience - it's something to tell my grandkids. It's a weird chain of events to have in your life. — Alex Garland

You know, failure hurts. Any kind of failure stings. If you live in the sting, you will - undoubtedly - fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say no, I'm just not going to let this get me down. — Sonia Sotomayor

Look, this island is an attempt to re-create a natural environment from the past. To make an isolated world where extinct creatures roam freely. Correct?" "Yes." "But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don't need to be calculated. It's rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn't need to pull out your calculator to check. You'd know tax was owed. And, similarly, I know overwhelmingly that one cannot successfully duplicate nature in this way, or hope to isolate it. — Michael Crichton

I eat tons, three full meals a day, and I never go to the gym. When I was a child, my geography teacher said, 'You may be slim now but if you carry on eating like that, you'll end up being really fat.' Fortunately, I really don't think I've changed much in the past two decades, so that teacher was an idiot. — Gina Bellman

He stepped back with exaggerated courtesy. But when I walked past him, he swatted my rump. Hard enough to sting.
"You need to be more careful," he growled. "Keep interfering in my business and you might get hurt."
I said sweetly as I continued to Jesse's room, "The last man who swatted me like that is rotting in his grave."
"I have no doubt about it." His voice was more satisfied then contrite. — Patricia Briggs

My grandfather used to say the placement of a birthmark was the story of how a person lost the battle in their past life. I guess you got stabbed in the neck. Bet it was a quick death, though. — Colleen Hoover

Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, 'for he weeps.' "The old woman smiled. 'Past tears are present strength,' said she. "'Oh!' said my brother, 'I saw you weep once over an eagle you shot.' "'That was because it was so like you, brother,' I replied; 'but indeed, this youth may have better cause for tears than that - I was wrong.' "'Wait — George MacDonald

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti

When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn't quite fill it in. — Mary Karr

I live with past called "DeYtH" ( a guy who is famous with cs 1.6 maps, mods, photoshop and e.t.c. and with my now "Mark Tven", you probably said "Oh,Oh I know this name this guy was a writer..." it's not taken the guy was called Mark Twain, I'm Tven, famous with awesome maps and interesting updates of cs 1.6 maps. To don't forget, I'm famous with my nick of past with writting. — Deyth Banger

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you. — R.S. Thomas

My job is to transmit to you all the memories I have within me. Memories of the past. — Lois Lowry

You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years - generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco - and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad - ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice - ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much - ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
— Wilkie Collins

If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget. The love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, the things I did that were good, the things I did that were shameful
if I kept them all inside, my memories of them would start to disappear. And then I would disappear. — Cassandra Clare

What makes 'good tape'? That is the question that has consumed my life for the past 20 years, and I have an answer for you — Alex Blumberg

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

I beseech you, my star . . . please see past the darkness. — Renee Ahdieh

Uh, got into a fight with the kitchen or something?" he asked, smirking.
I ran my hands through my hair and felt remains of the fruit as I did and cringed. Well, this must be attractive. I motioned for him to come into the living room and shut the door behind him.
"Something like that," I replied coolly.
He walked past me and went to the kitchen, probably to get a better look. "Well, I see you won. The fruit won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe the apples. Those look like they need some more killing. — Christie Cote

This past Thanksgiving, my father was at the farm, and I had all 11 dogs in the house with a father who never allowed dogs in the house. And he got up to leave the table and came back and Solomon was in his chair. And he says, "This dog is in my chair." And I said, "It's the other way around, you're sitting in his chair." — Oprah Winfrey

Not the first time. I didn't think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. I — V.S. Naipaul

I thought you said something about a wolf' I began.
'Yes. That black beast that gnaws at my bones whenever he gets a chance. He loiters in corners and behind doors most of the time, because he's afraid of these.' She indicated the white pills on the table beside her. 'But they don't last forever. It's nearly twelve and they are wearing off. He is sniffing at my neck. By half past he will be digging his teeth and claws in. Until one, when I can take another tablet and he will have to return to his corner. We are always clockwatching, he and I. He pounces five minutes earlier every day. But I cannot take my tablets five minutes early. That stays the same. — Diane Setterfield

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed.

but then.

there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you've ever done would be tossed out the closet window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you. — Rupi Kaur

I saw on his face a glimpse of his past. The damage, the unhappiness and the pain, and I wondered what kind of skeletons he has been hiding and for how long. It's one of those mutual attraction moments that are unexplainable, but as real as anything you've ever seen. Almost like my soul knows his soul. — Cyma Rizwaan Khan

Yes. I know all about soul-wraiths." Ramsey frowned. "How did you avoid them in the past?"
"Set a perimeter of energized diaman crystal. That will keep them at bay." Hel smiled without humor. "I have the diaman crystal in my saddle pack. I lack a sexual partner to energize them. I had intended to return with a magistra but a magister will work as well. Care to volunteer?"
"Only if I top," Ramsey snapped.
"You'd have to kill me first," returned Hel.
"With pleasure."
Steffania took a breath. Ram cut her off. "No. I don't share you, Vixen."
Fear of the unknown almost froze Adonia's tongue, but she was the obvious answer. She could do this, and the opportunity might never present itself again. "I'll be your partner. — Patricia A. Knight

I won't apologize for my past. A man is supposed to have experience."
"From all indications, you've acquired enough for ten men. — Lisa Kleypas

I've said more nonsex words to Harlow in the past five minutes than I did the entire time she was in Canada, but I'm surprised to find that not only is she easy to talk to, she's fun. "And, my impression of you is ever evolving, now that you aren't just a pretty face in my lap."
"You're one classy motherfucker, Finn."
"This speaking thing does wonders for expanding our horizons. — Christina Lauren

Strangely enough, for many many years I didn't talk about my childhood and then when I did I got a ton of mail - literally within a year I got a couple of thousand letters from people who'd had a worse childhood, a similar childhood, a less-bad childhood, and the question that was most often posed to me in those letters was: how did you get past the trauma of being raised by a violent alcoholic? — Dean Koontz

I don't like medicine. There's an old Irish proverb that goes, "If I knew where I was going to die, I wouldn't go there." I suspect that I'm going to die in a hospital, so every time I go past one, I drive really quickly to get away from those things. So I spend a lot of money on health: gyms, I go to naturopaths, acupuncturists; anybody else who's almost the alternative to medicine. I think by the time you need medicine, it's too late. That's my belief. — Robert Kiyosaki

Dear God," she said. She was shuddering suddenly and the tears came back and she looked past me into the light overhead. "If I can't trust you, then there is no one." "I love you" I said. "I don't care about any of it, I swear. I love you."
Holy Communion," she said. squeezing her eyes so the tears came out.
Yes Holy Communion, my darling," I said. — Anne Rampling

O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all father- and forefather-lands! Your children's land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility - the undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search. In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past. — Friedrich Nietzsche

And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself. The only way I could overcome this was to trick myself with that other self, who lived in dream and fantasy and who was annoyingly lackadaisical and unpractical. All passion, no sense, no order, no instinct for self-preservation. That's what I had done, and now that cowardly self had discovered an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past. As Renata Adler writes in Speedboat: I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. — Robyn Davidson

Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person. The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown. So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that. — Jennifer Johnston

You left me.
Not realizing until I've said my final good-bye and closed the door behind me, that he's not referring to the past.
He's prophesying our future. — Alyson Noel

Some lessons you learn gradually and some you learn in a sudden moment, like a flash going off in a dark room. I sift and rake and dig around in my vivid recollections of young Sean on the floor in summer, and I try to see what makes him tick, but I know a secret about young Sean, I guess, that he kind of ends up telling the world: nothing makes him tick. It just happens all by itself, tick tick tick tick tick, without any proximal cause, with nothing underneath it. He is like a jellyfish adrift in the sea, throbbing quietly in the warm waves of the surf just off the highway where the dusty white vans with smoked windows and indistinct decals near their wheel hubs roll innocently past. — John Darnielle

If I am alive this is my book, and my father lives now in the afterlife that is a book, a thing not vague or virtual but something you can hold and feel and smell because to my mind heaven like life must be a thing sensual and real. And my book will be a river and have the Salmon literal and metaphoric leaping inside it and be called History of the Rain, so that his book does not perish, and you will know my book exists because of him and because of his books and his aspiration to leap up, to rise. You will know that I found him in his books, in the covers his hands held, the pages they turned, in the paper and the print, but also in the worlds those books contained, where now I have been and you have been too. You will know the story goes from the past to the present and into the future, and like a river flows. — Niall Williams

In My Secret Life"
"I saw you this morning,
you were moving so fast.
Can't seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much,
there's no one in sight.
And we're still making love
In my secret life.
I smile when I am angry,
I cheat and I lie,
I do what I have to do
to get by,
In my secret life. — Leonard Cohen

I have lived my life backwards as compared to my peers. Everyone did incredibly stupid things as teenagers and pre-teens. I didn't. I was the one telling everybody that they were incredibly stupid. Now that they are all past that stage and we are all much older - I am the one doing incredibly stupid things. I have figured that I've earned that right, by now! You have to earn the right to be stupid. — C. JoyBell C.

Kanin peered down at me, his impassive gaze softening just a touch. "I am no longer your teacher, Allison," he said quietly. "You have been one of us for a while now. You have hunted, and you have killed. It is not my responsibility to curb you demon." He glanced past me to the place Stick and the men had stood moments before. "And I wanted to see what type of monster you had become. — Julie Kagawa

All the work I have done, all that I have sacrificed these past ten years, has been in Orlon's name, to honor him and to save his kingdom - my kingdom. I do not plan to let a spoiled, arrogant child destroy that with her temper tantrums. Did you enjoy the riches of Rifthold these years, Princess? Was it very easy to forget us in the North when you were buying clothes and serving the monster who butchered your family and friends?" Men, — Sarah J. Maas

Someone told me at the beginning of that summer that I would come face-to-face with death because of a Romeo and Juliet romance, I would never have believed it. But it wasn't like that summer went at all like I had planned in the first place. The Columbia recruiter sat across from me, her dark bushy eyebrows rising as high as they could go while she stared down at my application. "So, Alex, I see that you don't have any extracurricular activities." I shrugged. I was sitting in one of those uncomfortable orange plastic chairs in the guidance counselor's office, wishing I could just disappear. I was the first student in all of Winnebago High School's history to have a recruiter from an Ivy League school visit. By the way she looked at our tiny school with its ancient, chipped walls and rusted lockers, I could see why nobody had wanted to visit in the past. — Magan Vernon

There comes a time when you have to drop your burdens in order to fight for yourself and your dreams. Many of us carry baggage from the past that hinders our ability to fight for the things we want in life, our goals, our dreams. If you learn in this book to let go of those burdensome emotions and memories, then one of my chief objectives will be realized; you will be able to pursue and live your dreams. — Les Brown