Quotes About Memory

They used to have names but they dont anymore. The last witness who could have put a name to the faces is boxed up in the ground alongside them and if not nameless as well will soon be so. So. Who are they? The fact that they once walked about in the nomenclative mode is small comfort. Small comfort to whom? Well shit. You just throw up your hands. You dont have to have a name you say. Okay. Dont have to have a name in order to what?

You ever think what it would be like to meet a person you've known for a long time for the first time in these later years? To meet them anew. You're thinking they would be a much different person to you if you didn't know their history.

Did I kill a lot of people? I been asked that question a few times. But never before by a man. I told this one girl I was seeing that yes I had killed a bunch of gooks but that I hadnt eaten any of them.

when you close your eyes do I go away? Do you?

Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains? Where are the ladies, ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the governor's ball when you were a hero anointed with the blood of the enemies of the republic you'd elected to defend? -Cormac mcCarthy, Blood Meridian

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten (135)

Wood always remembers it was once a living tree, alive and breathing in both kingdoms, the one above and the one below.

Yesterday. Was there a more merciless word?

For a moment Dustfinger felt as if he had never been away- as if he had simply had a bad dream, and the memory of it had left a stale taste on his tongue,a shadow on his heart,nothing more.

Manchmal ist es schon praktisch, dass unser Gedaechtnis nicht halb so gut ist wie das der Buecher, ohne sie wuessten wir vermutlich gar nichts mehr.

To never let the other forget who they are—love is also about that.

Librarians. He'd never met one with a bad memory. He had a theory that words stuck to their minds like flies to flypaper.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Ves esos nombres? -preguntó señalando las letras cinceladas que hablaban de personas ya desaparecidas-. Detrás de cada nombre hay una familia, una madre o un padre, hermanos, acaso una esposa. Si uno de ellos averiguara que es capaz de despertar esas letras a la vida, que podría volver a ser de carne y hueso lo que ahora es únicamente un nombre, ¿no crees que él o ella harían todo lo posible por conseguirlo?

Do you remember the sound my heart made when it broke?

The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink. Chinese proverb, Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst

Non far dimenticare all'altro chi era. Dell'amore faceva parte anche questo.

Er würde so berühmt werden, das niemand sich mehr an Albert Chanute erinnern würde.

She spoke to the King, hoping he would forbid his son to go, but he said: "Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them." Eva Ibbotson, The Secret of Platform 13

As I never saw my father or my mother … my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above" I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

if it's not in my email archive, I don't know it

It was so easy for an old normal to make way for a new one, so easy to blot the memories of that old normal. That was a skill that had served her well, but in that bite and its honey, she'd counted the cost for the first time.

For decades, computers have been helping us to remember, but now it's time for them to help us to ignore.

There's things I remember and things I forget. I miss you; I guess that I should.