Quotes About Memory

He drinks, even though drinking always makes him remember rather than forget.

There is not one moment when that feeling of inadequate sorrow goes away. It just lessens and lessens, until it is mostly a memory of itself.

I collected their papers. The ones that blew into Brooklyn. They were just there at first. I didn't even know what they were. But once I did, I went all over the place, picking them up. I don't know what to do with them. I mean, they're meaningless now, but they still exist. You can't throw out something like that. You can't make them gone like that.

We pencil sketch our past lives so we can compare it to the Technicolor of the moment.

If you wanted to reassemble Elijah's afternoon, you could probably do it by stringing together all the photographs and all of the frames of videotape that he walks into. Always a passerby, he is immortalized and unknown.

True or not, every story has something it wants you to remember. True or not, every story has something it wants you to believe.

What is the answer, Evan? Ms Granger asked. Giraffe, I wanted to answer. It was on the tip of my tongue. Giraffe. This was in math class

There's no way to release yourself from a memory. It ends when it wants to end, whether it's in a flash or long after you've begged it to stop. What was the next line? What did I say to you then? I probably changed the subject, and the new subject wasn't worth remembering.

I want to see this as well as be a part of it. I want to remember it for what it is. I am amazed by the love I feel for so many people. I am amazed at the randomness, the comedy, and the faith that brings us all together and makes us hold on.

I still find it hard to see Ground Zero. I still find it hard to witness the nothingness. The lights are not a remedy for this. There will never be a remedy for this. But they are a strikingly apt presence. They are both something and nothing at once. They fill the space without claiming it as their own. They are translucent. They blur.

Normal people don't have to decide what's worth remembering. You are given a hierarchy, recurring characters, the help of repetition, of anticipation, the firm hold of a long history.

I thought about the word profile and what a weird double meaning it had. we say we're looking at a person's profile online... and we assume it's the whole them we're seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you're only seeing half the face... It's never the way you would remember seeing them.

Even now, you refused to be pixelated, forgotten, silenced, erased. Not that I wanted to erase you. The opposite. I wanted the opposite.

There was a time before you but I can't remember it now a time before your beauty and I were formally introduced I'm sure I lived without you but I don't remember how can't imagine living without these feelings you've produced

The song "Dream a Little Dream of Me" comes on Tariq's playlist, which makes Harry think of the movie Beautiful Thing, as Tariq no doubt knew it would. Harry can feel Craig smile under his lips, and knows he must be sharing the same thought. As confirmation, Harry feels Craig's finger on his back, tracing the letter B, then T. They start to shuffle and slow-dance. It feels good to move their legs.

We were once the ones who were living, and then we were the ones who were dying. We sewed ourselves, a thread's width, into your history.

What are you thinking, Evan? So I told him. Every you, every me. Fractals. Fracturs. I wonder who she is now, I said. So do I, Jack admitted. All the time.

Tony knows the names of trees and birds. As we walk around, he points them out to me. I try to record them in my mind, but the information never holds. What matters to me is the emotional meaning of the objects.

Why was I thinking about this? Oh, yes—the roses. Something to keep. Something gone.

The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday

and all I could think was that I should have been the one with the camera, because the two of you were such a funny picture. Instead, we have this blurry, happy shot, which must mean something to you if you carry it around like this, folded to fit.

They kept fighting, even after we were gone. Or especially because we were gone. They kept fighting for us. We are gone and maybe our spirits are gone too, as the ones who knew us stop remembering us so often, or come to join us. But the spirit of that strengh it carries through.

Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there's no signal event. There's just the steady accumulation of 'awhile'.

indelible, adj. That first night, you took your finger and pointed to the top of my head, then traced a line between my eyes, down my nose, over my lips, my chin, my neck, to the center of my chest. It was so surprising, I knew I would never mimic it. That one gesture would be yours forever.