Quotes About Memory

You will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.

Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his.

The man does not remember the hand that struck him, the darkness that frightened him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand and darkness remain with him, indivisible from himself forever, part of the passion that drives him wherever he thinks to take flight.

I scarcely know how to describe that room. 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.

Nothing ever goes away

I don't know if you have known anybody from that far back, if you have loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man. You gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort.

I was often allowed to watch them drink their cocktails.

It's painful, sometimes, to look back on a life and wonder if anything you did could have made any difference. So much is lost; and what's lost is lost forever. Was it destined to be lost, or could we have saved it?

You mean I have a home to go to as long as I don't go there?" He laughed. "Well, isn't it true? You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back." "I seem," I said, "to have heard this song before." "Ah, yes," said Giovanni, "and you will certainly hear it again. It is one of those songs that somebody somewhere will always be singing.

I scarcely know how to describe that room. 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. I did not really stay there very long—we met before the spring began and I left there during the summer—but it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea-change there.

Una cosa o l'altra: ci vuole forza per ricordare, ci vuole un altro tipo di forza per dimenticare, ci vuole un eroe per fare le due cose insieme. Chi ricorda corteggia la pazzia attraverso il dolore, il dolore dell'eterno ritorno della morte alla propria innocenza; chi dimentica corteggia un altro tipo di follia, la follia della negazione del dolore e dell'odio per l'innocenza; e il mondo si divide per lo più tra pazzi che ricordano e pazzi che dimenticano. Gli eroi sono rari.

I remembered his older brother, who had died in Sicily, in battle for the free world- he had barely had time to see Sicily before he died and had assuredly never seen the free world.

It would help if I were able to feel guilty. But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt. 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.

As pessoas que lembram correm o risco de enlouquecer de dor, a dor da morte de sua inocência, a recorrer eternamente; as que esquecem se arriscam a mergulhar em outra espécie de loucura, a loucura de negar a dor e odiar a inocência; e o mundo basicamente se divide entre loucos que lembram e loucos que esquecem.

I have not thought of that boy—Joey—for many years; but I see him quite clearly tonight. It was several years ago. I was still in my teens, he was about my age, give or take a year. He was a very nice boy, too, very quick and dark, and always laughing. For a while he was my best friend. Later, the idea that such a person could have been my best friend was proof of some horrifying taint in me. So I forgot him. But I see him very well tonight.

People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. Jacques

I told her that I have loved her once and I made myself believe it.

That was how I met Giovanni. I think we connected the instant that we met. And remain connected still, despite the fact that Giovanni will be rotting soon in unhallowed ground near Paris. Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils.

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

It is, thus, perfectly possible - indeed, it is common - to act on the genuine results of the event, at the same time that the memory manufactures quite another one, an event totally unrelated to the visible and uncontrollable effects in one's life. This may be why we appear to learn absolutely nothing from experience, or may, in other words, account for our incoherence: memory does not require that we reconstitute the event, but that we justify it.

Mas não é isso mesmo? Você só passa a ter uma casa quando vai embora dela, e depois, quando foi embora, você nunca mais pode voltar.

History does not refer merely to the past, history is literally present in all that we do

To be African American is to be African without any memory and American without any privilege.

Joyce is right about history being a nightmare - but it may be the nightmare from which no one *can* awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.