Quotes about the past

She was starting to suspect that facing up to the nightmare of the past is what gives you the power to build your future.

But that was the thing about the old days: they were old. This was his life now. He was content, and if not happy then happier than he ever thought he’d be again. He had work to do….The past was what it was, his home was here, and anything else was a fantasy.

Every villain's redemption arc begins with their origin story. (prologue)

You aren't what happened to you.

Visit the past, but don't stay there.

In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.

Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.

“You two don’t know yet,” he said. “When you get old, you think more about the past than about what you did five minutes ago. Time changes.”

Because she fears the past she distrusts the future — it, too, will turn into the past.

The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past.

I'm telling you, the whole of Australia went crazy. The national obsession became reform. I even think they understood that it wasn't the ideas themselves but the idea of the ideas, the idea that we might as well restlessly innovate and wherever possible obliterate our slavish connection with the past. Why? Because the past is always the worst thing happening to the present at any given time.

There's nothing like a nostalgia trip to make you feel alien from both your past and your present. You also see what's static in you, what you hadn't the courage or strength to change, and all your old fears, the ones you still carry. The disappointment of your failure is palpable. It's terrible to go around bumping into yourself like that.