John Steinbeck Quotes

Memory is the basis of every journey.

When we travel, we are like a film at the moment of exposure; it is memory that will develop it.

Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

Let your memory be your travel bag.

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.

There are endless what-ifs that have really made me have an appreciation for my journey and everything I have experienced along the way.

It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about 'old and other times' as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory.

Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. We possess nothing certainly except the past.

Yesterday is just a memory.

The past is one evil less and one memory more.

One of the reasons why old people make so many journeys into the past is to satisfy themselves that it is still there.

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.

This moment will just be another story someday.

He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

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.

The past is not a package one can lay away.

[Memory] is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. It is [the ability] to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading, and to call upon the future to illuminate it.

History and memory share events; that is, they share time and space. Every moment is two moments.

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.

Memories just get richer with time.

Memory is the space in which a thing happens for a second time.

If you travel in time and space, most of the people you know and love will eventually be gone. But you'll also be able to go and find them again.