“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.”

“The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.”

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”

“To remain in the past means to be dead.”

“To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.”

“A great future doesn’t require a great past.”

“The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”

“Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.”

“Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.”