Quotes About Memory

After reading four pages of continuous ten-year-old dialogue magically recalled by someone who was in the throes of alcohol withdrawal at the time, I wondered how he did it. No I didn't. I knew he made it up. It was easy and defendable, really, sublimating and eliding the past in service of a larger Emotional Truth.

Like clocks, recording devices were everywhere embedded; everything was being recorded at every moment, like a huge, infernal Mac Time Machine backup system that created backups of backups regressing into infinity. Who would play these back? Who would pick among them like the survivor of a hideous bombing looking for the rags once worn by his dead and naked mother?

You did not get a very good review from Dr. Trinh," he wrote. "She was very quick to contact me and to let me know that I should stay away from you because you obviously wanted to do damage to the memory of our dearest Celestine. She also said that she did not feel that you were very intelligent, or maybe you were just American, she's not sure...

I stood before her asserting my age, but in truth not knowing where the years had gone or how they had led up to this moment.

We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those differences, correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them, incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, or something, moves through time.

These past few days I've realised—we're strangers to each other. I feel like I'm standing outside their house and watching them through the window. I love them, of course, but more in memory than anything else. And love should be more than an echo.

You perceive and remember that to which you can relate. When you observe something aberrant, your tendency is to build a metaphor to explain what you didn't understand.

Lili could remember that, the feeling of biting down on one's thoughts and feelings and storing them up for no one.

Who can say why some arrive and then depart forgotten while others fashion history?

Tennessee Williams: 'Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going.

The time that has passed is ours to keep, and nothing is safer than that which was.

Pourquoi sommes-nous autant marqués par un détail, un geste, qui font de ces instants minimes le coeur d'une époque?

Before him stood his wife, and he knew this image was the one that would pass before his eyes at his moment of death.

hacernos olvidar las dichas transformadas en desdichas es una bendición de la amnesia.

conocemos alguna vez de verdad los sentimientos de un muerto?

Non, je n'ai rien caché. Après toi, il n'y a eu personne. J'aurais pu, mais je n'ai jamais pu.

Pourquoi ai-je oublié à quel point c'est doux d'être ici? C'était comme si tous ses bonheurs récents avaient aussitôt été condamnés à l'amnésie.

Había un reloj que entorpecía el silencio recordando su presencia a cada instante.

Se alejó, visiblemente en el mismo estado que aquel día de abril de 1992 en que vio una obra de Samuel Beckett en un teatro alternativo

Para sobrevivir, tiene que pintar su historia. Es la única salida. Se lo repite una y otra vez. Tiene que devolverles la vida a los muertos. Se

Minutos que uno se graba en la memoria en el momento mismo en que los vive. Segundos que son nuestra futura nostalgia.

La auténtica medida de la vida es el recuerdo.

La dicha se convierte en una isla en el pasado, inaccesible.

No vives solo, sino con una ausencia.