“We wouldnt be who we are without our past, even the painful parts, even the mistakes we've made and the losses we've experienced it's all part of who we are”

“There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.”

“We understand now, we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.”

“What they don't know is that we all belong to the places we've never even been before. If there's any kind of legitimate nostalgia, it's for everything we've never seen, the women we've never slept with, never dreamed of, the friends we haven't made, the books we haven't read, all that food steaming in the pots we've never eaten out of. That's the only kind of real nostalgia there is.”

“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.”

“It's true--I can see it now--we are made of where we've come from, molded by landscape, weather, harbors, hunger, and war, as much as by individual ancestors. The experience of the place--its struggles, strife, and horrors--accrues, even if we haven't personally experienced it. We are, still, its inevitable consequence.”