Quotes About Memory

I think back to the day I stood before my wife's grave for the final time, and turned away from it without regret, because I knew that what she was was not contained in that hole in the ground. I entered a new life and found her again, in a woman who was entirely her own person. When this life is done, I'll turn away from it without regret as well, because I know she waits for me, in another, different life.

A library is not information; it is a means of preserving information. In every case, before memory or information can be stored, someone must decide what must be stored. Someone must choose. Someone must curate.

In the next room, a very nice young lady, who happened to be completely naked, wanted me to tell her anything I could possibly remember about my seventh birthday party.

Mom, I remember Lizzie," Hart said. "She's really not my type." "She has a brother," Wes said, from his lounge. "He's not my type, either," Hart said.

If memory serves, the last time we met there were also exploding starships," I said, to Wilson. "That's odd," Lowen said. "The last time I saw Harry, there were exploding starships, too." "It's coincidental," Wilson said, looking at Lowen and then at me.

Wow, really?" I said, before I could stop myself. "I used the wrong word, didn't I," Davidson said, looking at me. "I can never remember if 'clank' or 'threep' is the word I'm not supposed to be using today.

I want to mourn her, Jared said. I feel her. I can feel the love I had for her. That he had for her. I want to remember her, even if that means I have to mourn her. That's not too much to bear for her memory. It's not, is it? No, Cloud said. I guess it's not.

That's aging's trump card; they still can't replace brains.

How can you say goodbye to someone who is a part of you?

I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

It's all fine to say, "Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget"—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.

And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.

For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.

Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.

You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, "It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said that autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. 'It is a glory,' she said, 'and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise.

During the dry years, the people forgot about the rich years, and when the wet years returned, they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

He never forgot anything but he never bothered to arrange his memories. -Hazel, Cannery Row

He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory.

In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, yes, I guess that's how it was.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.