Quotes About Memory

Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.

There was no way to grasp the reality of the present which slid away each second, invisible as air; reality only existed after the fact, in one's vision of the past.

She often told herself that story, easing herself into sleep, drifting off as she patched together the ghostly memory of someone in whose real existence she hardly believed any more.

He and I had already had our time, and though it was still very close and real to me, as beautiful and poignant as any place on a map, it was, in truth, another time—another country.

How close people could be to us when they had gone as far away as possible, to the edges of the map. How unforgettable.

In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed. Our bodies knew each other so well we didn't have to think about how to move. But when it was over and we lay still, I felt a terrible sadness come down because I loved him as much as I ever did.

The people we love never leave us, Anna. You know that already. That's what I mean by spirit. I mean love.

A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.

My father died when I was young. We all thought it was rather fortunate at first. It simplified all sorts of things. But over time…well. Let's just say I've developed a theory that only the vanished truly leave their mark. And I still don't feel I've sorted it out. Maybe we never do survive our families.

only the vanished truly leave their mark. And

Not every place has a story

I remembered running for miles looking for an occupied warthog hole with arap Maina, and then stooping to crinkle paper outside the mouth of its den. This was what you did to call out the pig, the noise working to aggravate the animal in some way I didn't understand but rarely saw fail.

but none of it was real any more. We lived on a ghost farm.

A red-jacketed porter hurried by me with a heavy steamer trunk, and I felt a rushing up of memory. At four, I had stared at the shrinking train that carried my mother away, black smoke rising, distance between us stretching by the moment.

A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered.

Her absence was still so loud and so heavy, I ached with it, feeling hollow and lost. I didn't know how to forget my mother any more than my father knew how he might comfort me.

That's the saddest piece as I see it, and have over and over. How some victims don't have even a whisper of no inside them. Because they don't believe the life they have is theirs to save. (seven) All the way to the village, I feel like a shaken-up snow globe, sharp flecks of memory colliding head on.

Arap Ruta indeed. I had known him since he wasn't

I had the pure sense that I couldn't ever truly lose the past, or forget what any of it had meant.

During an interview; Then McLain returns to the impact on Markham and Blixen of the death of Finch Hatton. "You know, there's a line at the end of my book that goes, 'This time with Denys would fade, and it would last forever.' That's something I actually believe about love. Sometimes we don't get to keep the people we love the most and who change us the most. That's an unromantic, uncommercial view of love. But to me it feels absolutely true.

Memory couldn't be counted on. Time was unreliable and everything dissolved and died—even or especially when it looked like life. Like spring. All around us, the grass grew. Birds made a living racket in the trees. The sun beat down with promise. From that moment forward, Ernest would always hate the spring.

The past doesn't go away. You just can't see it anymore.

Memories, made to last forever<3

I'm thankful that my memory is good because my vision is going.