“The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually in the past.”
Coming Up for Air, Part I, Ch. 4 (1939)
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George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.”
Edward Thomas, "Early One Morning" from Poems (1917) http://www.richmondreview.co.uk/library/thomas04.html#five
Misattributed

"Hilary Duff Says New Album Is More Personal" http://launch.yahoo.com/read/story/12065060. Yahoo! Music. September 27 2004. Retrieved October 25 2006.
On the album Hilary Duff (2004).

you know kind of thing. I think people understand I can turn that switch on but I'm also a sensitive, normal human being with feelings and I know how to express those too.
Fun with Dick & Jane: An Interview with Jim Carrey http://www.blackfilm.com/20051216/features/jimcarrey.shtml by Wilson Morales in Features, BlackFilm.com (December 2005)