Quotes About Memory

We don't drink to forget. We drink to remember.

Maar als het geschrevene soms al moeilijk te vergeten is, hoeveel moeilijker valt het dan niet datgene te vergeten waarvan men hoopte dat het ooit geschreven zou worden? Maar dat voor altijd ongeschreven is gebleven?

Niets is veilig, alles is bruikbaar, de verdraaiingen in zijn memorie, de verzinsels uit zijn buurt, de roddels uit zijn krant, en op den duur lijkt alles maar gebeurd te zijn omdat het hem prima stof oplevert, zelfs de dood van zijn eigen moeder. Wie schrijft is een gier.

Ik heb nooit, zoals als zij, geloofd in militaire triomfen in naam van God, volk of staat. Ik ben gepokt en gemazeld een Vlaming van de nooit-meer-oorloggeneratie. De lessen van het verspilde bloed aan Den IJzer, en in alle Europese loopgraven van '14-'18, zijn me met de paplepel ingegeven. Een goede oorlog? Dat is een tegenstrijdigheid in de bewoordingen.

The Chinese leadership hoped that the world would soon forget the Tiananmen Square massacre. Our job in Congress is to ensure that we never forget those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square that day or the pro-democracy cause for which they fought.

Surplus matter. I'd forgotten all about that phrase, those classes -- even before the accident, I mean. After the accident I forgot everything. It was as though my memories were pigeons and the accident a big noise that had scared them off. They fluttered back eventually -- but when they did, their hierarchy had changed, and some that had had crappy places before ended up with better ones; I remembered them more clearly; they seemed more important.

For you, I was a chapter. For me, you were the book.

It's a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand. In the wink of an eye my soul is turning, in your hands, in your hands. Are you going away, with no word of farewell, will there be not a trace left behind? I could of loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind. You know it was the last thing on my mind.

We all basically live in a world that we define by the people who have disappeared.

Memory has a way of distorting the past, of making certain events seem larger and more significant in retrospect than they ever could have been at the time they occured.

People come, people go Some grow young, some grow cold I woke up in between A memory and a dream So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint Let's head on down the road There's somewhere I gotta go And you don't know how it feels You don't know how it feels to be me

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.

Why else do we live, except to be loved and remembered by those we love?

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

Knowing where to look—and remembering what you have seen—is a hallmark of experience and expertise.

Their memory's like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can't remember Tell the things you can't forget that History puts a saint in every dream.

And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget that history puts a saint in every dream.

Time is just memory Mixed in with Desire.

Your old home town's so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called 'Hold On

And they all pretend they're Orphans And their memory's like a train You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can't remember Tell the things you can't forget that History puts a saint in every dream

The studio is torn down, all the people who played on it are dead, the instruments have been sold off. But you are listening to a moment that happened in time sixty years ago and you are hearing it just as sharp as when it was made. That remains an amazing thing to me.

Picture in a frame

a foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside and domestically approved romantic fancy is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing it will only be parlayed into a memory