Nostaglia Quotes

“The little room was full of ordinary things that had already become precious, that I couldn't help but want to have again, to feel like whoever it was I used to be, whether it was my past or someone else's.”
― Wendy McClure, The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie

“You said I was the girl who couldn't decide
between the ocean and the shore.
Said the only way to make me fall in love
with the present was to turn it into my past.”
― Lang Leav, Sea of Strangers

“There is a hopeless longing for nostalgia that pervades the human soul, a return to the warm glow of remembrance or some imagined past.”
― Deborah L. Norris, The House Guest: Pathway to Persuasion

“I have never returned to this lost paradise. Sometimes I am struck with the sudden desire to go to the Gare de l'Est, board the Orient Express, and retrace the route between Innsbruck and Plumeshof. As I so often saw other more or less close friends of the Welser family do, I fantasize about showing up without warning in the pretty meadow surrounded by fir trees and making the climb to the house while thinking only of Aunt Heidi, who has long since gone the to join her two older sons and their father in heaven. I would concentrate on her so strongly that I would eventually see her again on the doorstep, hastily drying her flour-covered hands in her apron; her opal eyes would brighten when she saw me. She would spread her arms while joyfully shouting: "Franziska!" and I would run to her calling back, "Aunt Heidi, Aunt Heidi!" Kurt's contagious laughter would echo in the distance. Lilo, smiling, would be hanging out the laundry. A lifetime of love would still be stretching out before them. A delicious aroma of pancakes would be drifting in the air ... The large earthenware oven, the eiderdown quilts, the painted wooden chairs with a little heart carved in them like the shutters ... nothing would have changed.”
― Françoise Hardy, The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles: A Memoir by Françoise Hardy