One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.
...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.
America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.
No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.
The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.
