Quotes About Memory

Everything that's been done to us we carry forever.

He knew there was no magic to wipe clean the slate of memory. You just learned how to move on.

It seems to me that when you look back at a life, yours or another's, what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks.

Everything that's been done to us we carry forever. Most of us do our damnedest to hold on to the good and forget the rest. But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can't or won't touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams. Wake

Everything that's been done to us we carry forever. Most of us do our damnedest to hold on to the good and forget the rest. But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can't or won't touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams.

What we use to construct the past is...a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses...a construct of what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see.

Before he'd shoved off in his canoe, he'd said, "We don't die. In the things we pass on to our children, we go on living.

Smells are the time machines of human perception. A scent can take you instantly back to a particular place and time.

It seems to me that when you look back at a life - yours or another's - what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall of that last summer in New Bremen is a construct of both what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see.

Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks.

I understood that the past is never really past. We live out history over and over, the worst of our memories right there alongside us, step for step, our companions to the grave.

NOTHING IS EVER everything, but the loss of a true love feels that way.

As I walked away he called to me and when I turned back he said, "They're never far from us, you know." "Who?" I asked. "The dead. No more'n a breath. You let that last one go and you're with them again.

But I believe if you tell a story, it's like sending a nightingale into the air with the hope that its song will never be forgotten.

Betrayer. That was what they called him. That was how they would remember him. If they were lucky enough to survive and remember anything, it would be because he had saved them, and they would never know.

The art of reading, as of learning, is this:… to retain the essential, to forget the nonessential.

I have an idea that is is what enduring love really means, Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known.

We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.

I have an idea that this is what enduring love really means. Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known.

A good marriage drags a long tail of memory behind it. A single word or gesture, a tone of voice can conjure up so many remembrances.

both remembered how it all started, and even now, in the middle of my middle age, when I think of that shining young girl, I still feel a little thrill of first love, still there, still burning like a pilot light.

I could not help seeing in Laurie the ghost of her younger self, the teenaged girl with a lovely, full, heart-shaped face. I have an idea that this is what enduring love really means. Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known. Laurie

A good marriage drags a long tail of memory behind it.

I have an idea that this is what enduring love really means. Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known. Laurie