Quotes About Memory

And when I saw this small, dignified man emerge from the plane, bow, and then stand rigidly at attention for his ovation, I suddenly realized that he was something I had not seen—a man who was still living in 1944! Or at least only a few days out of it. A man who for the past thirty years must have been carrying around in his head the forgotten wartime propaganda of those times.

Onoda kept neither diary nor journal, but his memory is phenomenal. Within three months of his return, he had dictated two thousand pages of recollections ranging from the most important events to the tiniest details of jungle life.

No matter how hard you try to create a story that's completely fictional, parts of your own experience are bound to surface.

Photography is a system of saving memories. It's a time machine, in a way, to preserve the memory, preserve time.

We'll drive backwards in what will become your new car to the beach where we first slept side by side. The green waves will go back into the ocean, yellow and blue. You'll pull up my underwear. I'll button your shirt. We'll dress and dress and dress. Then we'll step into our footprints and erase our trail.

Come back here the day before yesterday, you noodle-legged weasel!

The past, like a severed limb, tried to fix itself onto the body of the present.

At that time I would read passages of Father's books or a newspaper article that I was certain he had read because I wanted to follow a trail he had taken.

And I remember this man who never ran out of poems telling me once that 'knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.

knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.

My father is both dead and alive. I do not have a grammar for him. He is in the past, present and future. Even if I had held his hand, and felt it slacken, as he exhaled his last breath, I would still, I believe, every time I refer to him, pause to search for the right tense. I suspect many men who have buried their fathers feel the same. I am no different. I live, as we all live, in the aftermath.

And I remember this man who never ran out of poems telling me once that knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.

There has not been a day since his sudden and mysterious vanishing that I have not been searching for him, looking in the most unlikely places. Everything and everyone, existence itself, has become an evocation, a possibility for resemblance. Perhaps this is what is meant by that brief and now almost archaic word: elegy

A man who possesses the art of correct reading will … instinctively and immediately perceive everything which in his opinion is worth permanently remembering, either because it is suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing … The art of reading, as of learning, is this: … to retain the essential, to forget the nonessential.

Men naturen har förlänat människan med den lyckliga förmågan att glömma. Annars skulle hon inte stå ut med livet

Han hade en gång förlorat "sitt första hjärta", som det heter.

Îmi amintesc din via?? doar iubirea mea pentru tine.

Mänsklighetens minne är bristfälligt och orättvist, och våra äldsta och största välgörare ha vi glömt.

Gr?dinarului i s-a spus c? doar iarba va cre?te pe mormântul meu, iar prim?vara voi avea anemone. O s? vii odat? o s? culegi o anemon? ?i o s? te gânde?ti la mine. Ia-o ca un cuvânt de dragoste care a fost gândit dar nu a fost rostit niciodat?.

Memory is social: people remember collectively, they remember publicly, and they remember interactively.

And yet my heart is buried with you in the strange soil of the mortal world, as it was drowned with you in the cold waters of the undersea. It was yours before I could ever admit it, and yours it shall ever remain.

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That's why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.

He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.

I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don't even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I'm going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn't involve dying.