Quotes About Memory

And then there is the inevitable third stylisation—of posthumous memory. Leading to the moment when the last living person to remember you has their very last thought about you. There ought to be a name for that final event, which marks your final extinction.

But then we learn something else: that the brain doesm't like to be typecast. Just when you think everything is a matter of decrease, of subtraction and division, your brain, your memory, may surprise you. As it it's saying: Don't imagine you can rely on some comforting process of gradual decline--life's much more complicated than that. And so the brain will throw you scraps from time to time, even disengage those familiar memory loops.

an?msanan hazlar kadar, an?msanan ac?lar konusunda da nostaljik olmak mümkün

Qué vanidad tan curiosa es la que impulsa al presente a esperar que el pasado se amamante de él.

Back in 'my day'—though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .

drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history. This

This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

I considered ducking the appointment, but eventually decided to let the heart speak, and rolled up. I had, after all, spent three days wondering what it would be like to be married to her. In fact, I'd thought about Annick so much that I couldn't remember what she looked like. It was like putting layer after layer of papier mâché over an object and gradually seeing the original shape disappear. How terrible if I failed to recognise the woman I'd already been married to for three days.

When we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer.

I survived. "He survived to tell the tale"—that's what people say, don't they? History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.

The past, as we have been told so many times, is a foreign country where things are done differently.

There is a religion somewhere in the world that believes we all die twice; once in the normal way and the second time when the last person who really knew us dies, so one's living memory is gone from the earth.

They say one sign of growing old is that the past becomes more real than the present and already I can feel the fingers of those lost decades closing their grip round my imagination, making more recent memory seem somehow greyer and less bright.

Así es cómo funciona el olvido: eliminando el pasado y no hablando nunca de él.

Vale, entonces un recuerdo. ¿Tiene que ser feliz? —No. Prefiero que sea verdadero a que sea feliz.

New losses dig up past losses, as if one needs the other to remember how it's done.

My memories will be erased and then I'll be force-fed the story from the society pages?

Did that kiss nearly destroy the memory of all other kisses, and become the benchmark against which all future kisses would be measured?

For what it's worth . . . I don't think anyone you love is ever truly gone. I do very much feel their absence . . . but I also feel their presence all the time, in a new way. In some ways they're with me now more than ever. I don't know if that makes sense.

Her mind was obsessively playing and replaying his words of five minutes ago. And finally she could contain them no longer. 'Was she pretty?' she mimicked the vicar's creaky tones. 'Very,' she answered, in a very good imitation of the viscount's own baritone. Kit snorted a laugh. But really, Kit had waxed almost lyrical about Caroline Allston--- Caro, no doubt. Susannah wondered of Caro was carved on the viscount's heart the way it was on the oak, scarred and thick with age.

How he felt (hard as a wall, safe as a house, dangerous as a wild animal), how he smelled (sweat, sawdust, smoke, musk, sex), how he tasted (like sin, if sin was a liqueur)- taken together they should have all comprised an adventure. And then a lesson. And then be rapidly consigned to history.

But she would never forget Brodick... or the spontaneous kiss he'd given her that had meant nothing to him and everything to her.

The little boy leaned against his father's chest and slowly nodded. Yes, he said. I heard all of the names, but I don't remember the other two… just the man who hurt Gillian. That's the name I most want, Brodick said softly. Who is he, Alec? Alec, please, Gillian began. Tell me, Alec. Who is he? Baron, Alec whispered. His name is Baron.