Giovanni's Room quotes about memory & the past

Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both.

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

He made me think of home—perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword.

I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry.

It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.

It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room.

To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it.

I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning our life together held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day.

Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea-change there.

Ah, yes, and you will certainly hear it again. It is one of those songs that somebody, somewhere, will always be singing.

Perhaps I didn’t know it then. I only knew I had to get out of Giovanni’s room.