Quotes About Memory

I wonder, sometimes, as we wander that graveyard, what will remain of me someday. Am I creating a legacy that matters, that will last? Will someone stand at my grave one day, wondering who I was?

When we lose our stories, we lose ourselves.

You know there is an old proverb that says, 'We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name.' The first death is beyond our control, but the second one we can strive to prevent.

Lo que la cabeza no recuerda el corazón lo sigue sabiendo. El amor es lo más fuerte que existe. Más fuerte que todas las demás cosas.

Every time you mourn for me, I'll be far away. But when you celebrate, I'll be right there with you, dancing.

May your names never go unspoken and your stories forever be told.

because we had survived sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, we discovered bones that rose from the dark earth and sang as white birds in the trees Because the story of our life becomes our life Because each of us tells the same story but tells it differently and none of us tells it the same way twice . . (from, Why We Tell Stories)

Heartland Now that we've given our hearts away With the bric-a-brac, we want them back. Now we look for them secondhand, Someone else's, in the old songs, The slowly unfolding novels We never had time for. Hearts That taught themselves to fly; …overstuffed hearts, still leaking Downy secrets like feathers. We want someone to say, 'I give you my heart', meaning, 'Summer and winter', meaning 'All my time in the this world'…

Memory revises me.

My tongue remembers your wounded flavor. The vein in my neck adores you. A sword stands up between my hips, my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see. And I've lived longing for your every look ever since. The longing entered time as this body. And the longing grew as this body wanes. That longing will outlive this body I loved you before I as born. It makes no sense, I know. Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes. And I've been lonely for you from that instant.

Memory revises me. Even now a letter comes from a place I don't know, from someone with my name and postmarked years ago, while I await injunctions from the light or the dark; I wait for shapeliness limned, or dissolution. Is paradise due or narrowly missed until another thousand years? I wait in a blue hour and faraway noise of hammering, and on a page a poem begun, something about to be dispersed, something about to come into being.

And of all the rooms in my childhood, God was the largest and most empty.

Memory is sweet. Even when it's painful, memory is sweet.

Then you'll remember your life as a book of candles, each page read by the light of its own burning.

The sound of rain outlives us. I listen, someone is whispering.

What binds me to this earth? What remembers the dead and grows toward them?

Childhood? Which childhood? The one that didn't last? The one in which you learned to be afraid?

Which is this? This is persimmons, Father. Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk, the strength, the tense precision in the wrist. I painted them hundreds of times eye's closed. These I painted blind. Some things never leave a person: scent of hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

What binds me to this earth? What remembers the dead and grows toward them? I'm

The earth is flat. Those who fall off don't return. The earth is round. All things reveal themselves to men only gradually. I won't last. Memory is sweet. Even when it's painful, memory is sweet. Once, I was cold. So my father took off his blue sweater.

I would know your scent anywhere. Even in the darkest night in the darkest room with a hundred other people." His voice dropped to a husky whisper. "Yes, Camille. I would know it. Always, I would know...you.

job to remember everything. But the lady was a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. Alas, Napier loved nothing better

There's something in the back of my mind when I wake up. Just out of reach. Like when you get a bit of food stuck between your teeth, right at the back of your mouth.