Quotes About Memory

Recollections are in the eye of the beholder. No two held side by side can ever quite match.

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.

Wenn jemand starb, dem du dein Herz geschenkt hattest, nahm er es dann mit?

She is quiet for a moment. have you ever been swimming in the summer, she asks, when a cloud comes in front of the sun? You know how, for a few seconds, you're absolutely freezing in th water and you think you'd better get out and dry off? But then all of a sudden the sun's back out and you're warm again and when you tell people how much fun you had swimming you wouldn't even think to mention those clouds. Cara shrugs. That's what it's like, with my father. -Cara

The Japanese believe that it takes three generations to forget. Those who experience a trauma pass it along to their children and their grandchildren, and then the memory fades.

Art isn't what you see. It's what you remember.

There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop. Maybe it's because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of life. Maybe it's because they forgot. It's nobody's fault, and it's not a big deal, but it's a little depressing all the same. A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that i put down everything else to come watch.

No matter how long I live, I will always remember the way the light went out of her eyes, like a candle flame caught in an unexpected wind.

he glanced at the stranger in the seat beside him and tried to remember when she used to be his daughter.

It is amazing how quickly lies compound. They cover like a coat of paint, one on top of the other, until you cannot remember what color you started with.

Memory isn't something that stays with you at all times. It's a quantity that gets summoned or evoked or brought to mind. It gets carried to an arena for our viewing pleasure. By definition, then, there are times it must go missing.

Some stains never wash out.

I felt this boy whose name I couldn't be bothered to remember grunting and heaving inside me; I was that empty and that far away. And suddenly I knew what became of all those lost balloons: they were the loves that slipped out of our fists; the blank eyes that rose in every night sky.

Si le das el corazón a alguien y luego muere, ¿se lo lleva consigo?

Se dai il tuo cuore a qualcuno e lui muore, lo porta via con sé? Devi passare il resto della vita con un buco dentro che non può essere riempito?

Would you rather spend the rest of your life thinking about us, and remembering it as something totally perfect, or would it be better to let it get all screwed up and have that as your memory?

in order to forgive, you have to remember how you were hurt in the first place. And that in order to forget, you had to accept your role in what had happened.

It is amazing, I realize, how quickly lies compound. They cover like a coat of paint, one on top of the other, until you cannot remember what color you started with.

Lacy took the box she'd brought up from the basement and placed each item inside. Here was the crime scene: look at what was left behind and try to re-create the boy.

It is remarkable how events and truths can be reshaped, like wax that's sat too long in the sun. There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.

There is something else about memory, something Thomas hadn't brought up. It's not a video recording. It's subjective. It's a culturally relevant account of what happened. It doesn't matter if it's accurate; it matters if it's important in some way to you. If it teaches you something you need to learn.

As long as I remembered them, then they were still here.

Words, he knew, could scar.

My father died last year," Thomas said. "I still look for him in crowds.