Quotes About Memory

The Photograph and the Journal

The reason I want to remember this is because I know we'll never be able to do it again.

It had taken me twenty-five years to reach the point where I could talk openly about Manzanar

Writing it has been a way of coming to terms with the impact these years have had on my entire life.

The times I thought I had dreamed it were one way of getting rid of it, part of wanting to lose it, part of what you might call a whole Manzanar mentality I had lived with for twenty-five years. Much more than a remembered place, it had become a state of mind. Now, having seen it, I no longer wanted to lose it or to have those years erased. Having found it, I could say what you can only say when you've truly come to know a place: Farewell

People say that when you return to the place where you grew up, it always seems smaller than you remember. ...but I don't know if it was because I had built it up in my memories or I had gotten bigger. Maybe both.

Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.

I live in the past. I take everything that has happened to me and arrange it. From a distance like that, it doesn't do any harm, you'd almost let yourself be caught in it. Our whole story is fairly beautiful. I give it a few prods and it makes a whole string of perfect moments. Then I close my eyes and try to imagine that I'm still living inside it.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

Where shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything anymore: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.

All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning.

I thought I saw Anny smiling. I try to refresh my memory: I need to feel all the tenderness that Anny inspires; it is there, this tenderness, it is near me, only asking to be born. But the smile does not return: it is finished. I remain dry and empty.

If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate -- which is to say, the memoryless existence of hymenoptera and gastropods. None of this is so important, to be sure. The world can get by nicely without literature. But without human beings it can get by better yet.

La mayor parte del tiempo, al no unirse a palabras, mis pensamientos quedan en la niebla. Dibujan formas claras y agradables, se disipan; en seguida las olvido.

But I can't see anything any more: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, nor whether they are remembered or invented.

But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged.

Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing—not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence—which is limited only by existence.

J'ai voulu que les moments de ma vie se suivent et s'ordonnent comme ceux d'une vie qu'on se rappelle. Autant vaudrait tenter d'attraper le temps par la queue.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered.

AÄŸac?n çevresinde depreÅŸip duran bütün bu var olanlar, hiçbir yerden gelmiyor ve hiçbir yere gitmiyorlard?. Birden var oluyorlar ve sonra birden varoluÅŸtan kesiliyorlard?: VaroluÅŸ bellekten yoksundur, kaybolmuÅŸlarla ilgili tek bir an?s? bile yoktur. Her yanda varoluÅŸ, bitimsiz, fazladan, her yerde ve her zaman varoluÅŸ; ancak yine varoluÅŸla s?n?rlanan varoluÅŸ!