“Human beings are naturally flawed when it comes to time and memory. The past is forgotten, or it is believed bad things will not recur, and people become bound in their current problems. That which afflicted the grandfathers of their grandfathers is a distant, dim thing, and not as important as present concerns, no matter how trivial.”

“When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.”

“Today is my grandfather's birthday.""How old is he?""Sixty-three. It's hard to believe he was once a human being.”

“Nostalgic memory is a sudden encounter with the thingness of the thing that has been forgotten, not the continuous desire for possessions, whether past, present, or future.”

“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.”

“when all of life becomes crowded with profound and weighty matters, making time to engage in trivial things becomes an even greater priority.”