Quotes About Memory

I'd thought I remembered her perfectly. But it is much better to see her imperfectly, to see something new every time she moves.

once time is lit, it will burn whether or not you're breathing it in. even after smoke becomes air there is the memory of smoke.

Every traveller returns home.

She was pretty, though. Like a flower. I missed that.

You didn't even know my name, I thought. You're just repeating what he said.

As the two of us—past self, my present self—hovered over her bed, I could see each cruel damage written across her skin, beneath her eyes, down into her bones. She was no longer the way she wanted to be remembered. She was already more breath than body.

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.

If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. Your memories will be my most lasting impression.

The weight of the world comes largely from its past.

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

once time is lit, it twill burn whether or not you're breathing it in. even after smoke becomes air there is the memory of smoke

It's hard to remember someone when you don't know what they look like. Because A changes from day to day, it's impossible to choose a memory and have it mean more than that single day. No matter how I picture A, it's not going to be what A looks like now. I remember A as a boy and as a girl, as tall and short, skin and hair all different colors. A blur. But the blur takes the shape of how A made me feel, and that may be the most accurate shape of all.

I have always thought of the body as something that is written from the inside. I don't need Rhiannon's name on my skin, because it is already indelible in my thoughts.

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. But I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available—the only way I am going to see them again—is if I conjure them in my mind.

But now it's the museum backdrop for the exhibition of grief.

You leave the place you're from, you have to. But you also need to have it stay in you for a long time. It is your center.

I finished and e-mailed to myself to see what it'd read like to open, and decided it looked a little loopy and that I'd been the right person to open it after all. I read him, thought about him, and I never saw him again except on television once.

The mind was a capricious and undisciplined creature. You couldn't always keep it on a lead, and it was for ever dashing off into the undergrowth of the past, digging up some decayed bone of memory, and bringing it back, with tail wagging, to lay it at your feet.

Niciodata n-am visat mult. Ceea ce inseamna din cate inteleg ca pur si simplu nu-mi amintesc visele, fiindca de visat visam tot timpul cat dormim sau cel putin asa se spune. E ca si cum as avea un televizor la care nu se uita nimeni si care imi palpaie in cap cat e noaptea de lunga. Canalul viselor. As vrea sa pot sa trag toata chestia asta pe video. Poate ca atunci mi-as da cat de cat seama ce se intampla cu mine. Si nu ma refer la genunchi, ci la cap. La minte. La suflet.

It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments... In Blue Velvet, it was red lips, green lawns, and the song—Bobby Vinton's version of 'Blue Velvet.' The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it.

Whatever secrets the dead take with them, they should be allowed to keep. That's my new philosophy. Or put another way: the time to properly know someone is when he, or she, is still alive.

Henoch has passed from the childhood stage of unfettered adoration for his father and has moved to a difficult point of feeling that every demand on his person is a deeply rooted injustice. Cain grimaces at the remembered familiarity of THAT.

There are worse fates than being forgotten.

However the story is told and elaborated, the raw shame of it will be with him now til his last breath.