Quotes About Memory

Mathinna remembered what her mother had said about thinking of yourself as the thread of a necklace, the people and places you treasure as the shells. Maybe Wanganip and Hazel were saying the same thing: that if you love something it stays with you, even after it's gone.

It's a bitter nostalgia from a moment not yet passed.

From the recesses of my brain a word floats up: synecdoche. A part that stands in for the whole. Christina's World.

How strange, I think—that I am in a place my parents have never been and will never see. How strange that I am here and they are gone.

And even if she loses the charms, she thinks, they'll always be a part of her. The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin.

I can't imagine why you didn't memorize this route on the

Now Molly takes the knife and pokes it through the tape of the box Vivian has chosen: 1929–1930. Vivian, sitting on a wooden chest, waits patiently. After opening the flaps, Molly lifts out a mustard-colored coat, and Vivian scowls. "Mercy sake," she says. "I can't believe I saved that coat. I always hated it.

Now and then I leaf through the small blue volume of Emily Dickinson poems that my teacher, Mrs. Crowley, pressed into my hand. I remember her words to me when I left school: Your mind will be your comfort. It is, sometimes. And sometimes it isn't.

There was never a cataclysmic moment in which things might have been, however briefly, etched in relief against memory, against things to come—a moment which, by its sheer magnitude, defined her history and her future. Instead, Kathryn thinks, she has disintegrated slowly over a number of years.

He llegado a pensar que eso es el cielo: un lugar en el recuerdo de otros donde pervive lo mejor de nosotros.

Riddled his body with bullets"—my da talked like that. Mam was always shushing him, but he waved her off. "It's important they know this," he said. "It's their history! We might be over here now, but by God, our people are over there.

I keep forgetting to answer to Dorothy.

I try to think the simpler thing; it's easier that way. But then life complicates it, two minds living and thinking in the same small space. You think you've placed a thought or a memory so you can live with it, and then that other mind comes crowding in and knocks it down.

Vivian said she wanted to clean out her attic. But I think what she really wanted was to see what was in those boxes one last time. And remember those parts of her life.

the tattered paper with Mark Flannery, The Irish Rose, Delancey Street,

life. I've come to think that's what heaven is—a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

I try to forget the horror of what happened. Or—perhaps forget is the wrong word. How can I forget? And yet how can I move forward even a step without tamping down the despair I feel? When I close my eyes, I hear Maisie's cries and Mam's screams, smell the acrid smoke that must have started from that pile of newspapers, feel the heat of the fire on my skin, and heave upright on my pallet in the Schatzmans' parlor, soaked in a cold sweat.

I've come to think that's what heaven is—a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

Feeding Carmine bread soaked in milk reminds me of the Irish dish called champ I often made for Maisie and the boys—a mash of potatoes, milk, green onions (on the rare occasion when we had them), and salt. On the nights when we went to bed hungry, all of us dreamed of that champ.

There is an old Chinese saying, "Write your sorrows in sand and etch your joys in stone.

When I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me;Plant thou no roses at my head,Nor shady cypress tree.Be the green grass above meWith showers and dewdrops wet;And if thou wilt, rememberAnd if thou wilt, forget.

Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land.

Yes, my first memory of singing, in general, was of a Christmas song. And then listening to Christmas music was really the first music I was ever connected to.

Be the green grass above me, with showers and dewdrops wet; and if thou wilt, remember, and if thou wilt, forget.