Ben

“Perhaps we really are surrounded by the past, made prisoners of it. No matter how far we travel, how hard we try to forget, the scarred tree forever stands by the side of the road, if only in our minds. The only way to drive by is to set the past straight, once and for all, by remembering.”
― Michael Paterniti, Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays

“I saw William Blackett’s escaping sail already far from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak to him, but he did not see me. There was a patient look on the old man’s face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship.”
― Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

“A kindred spirit? Perhaps--if not kindred to the man he is, or was, then to the sort of man he wouldn't mind being.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“A person who doesn't learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63