Quotes About Memory

To each, or about each, of his colleagues he had said at one time or other, something... something impossible to recall in this or that case and difficult to define in general terms -- some careless bright and harsh trifle that had grazed a stretch of raw flesh.

GeçmiÅŸ en soylu yakacakt?r.

And presently I was shaking hands with both of them in the street, the sloping street, and everything was whirling and flying before the approaching white deluge, and a truck with a mattress from Philadelphia was confidently rolling down to an empty house, and dust was running and writhing over the exact slab of stone where Charlotte, when they lifted the laprobe for me, had been revealed, curled up, her eyes intact, their black lashes still wet, matted, like yours, Lolita.

The theme of the book is simple: a man is dying: you feel him sinking throughout the book; his thought and his memories pervade the whole with greater or lesser distinction (like the swell and fall of uneven breathing), now rolling up this image, now that, letting it ride in the wind, or even tossing it out on the shore, where it seems to move and live for a minute on its own and presently is drawn back again by grey seas where it sinks or is strangely transfigured.

It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory. Other than that image no Mary existed, nor could exist.

If only it were possible to juicily belch up the life one's lived, chew it anew and gulp it down, and then once more to roll it with a fat, ox-like tongue, to squeeze from its eternal dregs the former sweetness of crisp grass, drunk with the morning dew and the bitterness of lilac leaves!

As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory

Kilencvennégy évesen is szerette újra átélni azt az elsÅ' szerelmes nyarat, s nem úgy, mint egy épp az imént látott álmot, hanem mint a múltbéli tudat felidézését, amelynek révén leküzdötte a szürke hajnali órákat a felületes alvás és az aznapi elsÅ' tabletta között.

I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel.

Only a Chinaman or a retarded child can imagine being met, in that Next-Installment World, to the accompaniment of all sorts of tail-wagging and groveling of welcome, by the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one's bare leg, which has been amputated since then and now, in the wake of the gesticulating mosquito, comes back, stomp, stomp, stomp, here I am, stick me on.

The more you love a memory, the stronger and the stranger it becomes.

I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection.

And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only been defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night - every night, every night - the moment I feigned sleep.

Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams.

A sentyment staje siÄ™ uci??liwy. W koÅ"cu jest coÅ› nazbyt fizycznego w próbie zachowania czÄ…stki dzieciÅ"stwa na swoim mostku. - Nie pan pierwszy sprowadza wiarÄ™ do zmysÅ'u dotyku.

Wspomnienie nie dawa?o mu spokoju. Mo?na je by?o wytrzyma? przez chwil? i to tylko z perspektywy nieuleczalnej choroby, w wyra?nym przeczuciu nadchodz?cej ?mierci.

One had to forget - because one could not live with the thought that this graceful, fragile, tender young woman with those eyes, that smile, those gardens and snows in the background, had been brought in a cattle car to an extermination camp and killed by an injection of phenol into the heart, into the gentle heart one had heard beating under one's lips in the dusk of the past.

I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window. Its reflection fills the oval mirror above the leathern couch where my uncle sits, gloating over a tattered book. A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

He never saw that dress again and when he mentioned it in retrospective evocation she invariably retorted that he must have dreamt it

The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.

I almost said—trying to find some casual remark—'I wonder sometimes what has become of the little McCoo girl, did she ever get better?'—but stopped in time lest she rejoin: 'I wonder sometimes what has become of the little Haze girl . . .

De ha gyorsan végezzük a m?veletet, ha a kitörölhetetlen b?nöket két gyors szellemesség között említjük, akkor van rá esély, hogy magának az életnek érzéstelenítÅ'je csillapíthatja a felejthetetlen kínt, ajtajának egy gyors lendítésével.

Oh Mnemosyne, sweetest and most mischievous of muses

Vladimir Nabokov