Quotes About Memory

or rather, how strange to find that the present contained such a bright shard of the living past, damaged and eroded but not destroyed.

when what she needed was something concrete, some small final memory to slip its hand in hers and accompany her—sightless now, stumbling—through this sudden desert of existence which stretched before her from the present moment until the end of life.

In New York, everything reminded me of my mother—every taxi, every street corner, every cloud that passed over the sun—but out in this hot mineral emptiness, it was as if she had never existed; I could not even imagine her spirit looking down on me. All trace of her seemed burned away in the thin desert air.

All of a sudden, images from every crime movie I'd ever seen began to pop into my mind—the windowless room, the harsh lights and narrow hallways, images which did not seem so much theatrical or foreign as imbued with the indelible quality of memory, of experience lived.

The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star Ã¢â'¬Â¦

The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…

Every new event - everything I did for the rest of my life - would only separate us more and more: days she was n longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.

While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.

I think he did save me, though. And someplace, if there is a place where lists are kept, and credit given, I am sure there is a gold star by his name. But I am getting sentimental. Sometimes, when I think about these things, I do.

I remember a story I read once, a soldier, was it at Shiloh? He was talking to me but not with his whole attention. Gettysburg? a soldier so mad with shock that he started burying birds and squirrels on the battlefield. You had lot of little things killed too, in the crossfire, little animals. Many tiny graves. p128

I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life

The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business

Because I love Henry. Henry's dead. I can't help it. I still love him.

Yet every time I remembered it I was suffused with a glow of warmth.

But for all foreseeable time to come- for as long as history was written, until the icecaps melted and the streets of Amsterdam were awash with water- the painting would be remembered and mourned. Who knew, or cared, the names of the Turks who blew the roof of the Parthenon? the mullahs who had ordered the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan? Yet living or dead:their acts stood. It was the worst kind of immortality. Intentionally or no: I had extinguished at light at the heart of the world.

guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

Then on the opposite page a different ad, for digital cameras, scrawled in artsy letters and signed Joan Miró: You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life

And the flavor of Pippa's kiss- bittersweet and strange- stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.

hinc illae lacrimae, hence those tears.

Twelve years ago, in vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face. It has remained before my eyes ever since.

ten years of our lives were as a mist that rolls away.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death hath no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

Personally, I wouldn't mind Alzheimer's. You buy one magazine, and you're entertained for the rest of your life.