Quotes About Memory

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

Remember this: a story that must be told never forgives silence. Speech is the mouth's debt to a story.

You wrote words with your hand, but your mind wiped me away.

What I know are simple truths. I know that the fabric of memory is reinforced by stories, rent by silences. I know that power dreads memory. I know that memory outlasts power's viciousness. I know . . . that a voiceless man is as good as dead.

a story that must be told never forgives silence

I still look back with pleasure on the first scenes of my life, though that pleasure has been for the most part mingled with sorrow.

Her hands stretch across the table and squeeze the fingers of my left hand. "I've got my bestest lover here, and we're talking about things that no longer exist for me. It's like discussing dreams we've had.

did I mention my first kiss was extracted by someone who never should have been that lucky?

Wind against window—let the words fight it out— As I try to remember: What is it That's so late in coming? What was it I understood so well last night, so well it kissed me, Sweetly, on the forehead?

Olga Lengyel

En alguna parte de la tierra, más allá de las alambradas de púas, los hombres libres se estrechaban la mano y levantaban sus vasos para desear a los demás un feliz Año Nuevo... Pero en Birkenau, las ratas estaban cebándose en la carne de los niños de Europa

Mis refugios más bellos,/ los lugares que se adaptan mejor a los colores últimos de mi alma, / están hechos de todo lo que los otros olvidaron.

There are some people at whom one only has to glance for one's throat to tighten and one's eyes to fill with tears of emotion. These people make one feel as if a stronger memory of our former innocence remains in them, as if they were a freak of nature, not entirely battered by the Fall. Perhaps they are messengers, like the servants who find a lost prince who's unaware of his origins, show him the robe that he wore in his native country, and remind him how to return home.

It's clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there's a planetary configuration on the table, the entire Cosmos if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminum spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a cell phone, a piece of paper and a pen. And one of my gray hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.

Your memory creates postcard images, but it doesn't really comprehend the world at all. That's why a landscape is so affected by the mood of the person looking at it. In it a person sees his own inner, transitory moments. Wherever he looks, he sees nothing but himself.

It's clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there's a planetary configuration on this table, the entire Cosmos if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminum spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a mobile phone, a piece of paper and pen. And one of my grey hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.

Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.

Perhaps one could get used to it? Learn to live with it, just as people live in the cities of Auschwitz or Hiroshima, without ever thinking about what happened there in the past. They simply live their lives.

Anger can prompt one to utter various words, but it can also make one fail to remember them afterward.

These people make one feel as if a stronger memory of our former innocence remains in them, as if they were a freak of nature, not entirely battered by the Fall. Perhaps they are messengers, like the servants who find a lost prince who's unaware of his origins, show him the robe that he

Sometimes I can't sleep because I miss you all so much. And sometimes I don't think about you at all.

Ksi??yc to tylko maska s?o?ca. Wk?ada j?, kiedy wychodzi noc? pilnowa? ?wiata. Ksi??yc ma krótk? pami??, nie pami?ta, co by?o miesi?c temu

His only regret is that the little camera can't take a picture of itself.

If something hurts me, I erase it from my mental map. Places where I stumbled, fell, where I was struck down, cut to the quick, where things were painful—such places are simply not there any longer. This means I've gotten rid of several big cities and one whole province. Maybe someday I'll eliminate a country.