Quotes About Memory

Imagine the martyrdom of a pun which has become an integral portion of one's organism to be lugged through life like the convict's ball and chain. Do you suppose he vainly tries to escape it, or is he passive in its clutches or can it be possible that some memory of the joy still survives which irradiated his being, the first time he heard it from his lips in the springtime of his practice?

The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.

We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

One can only remember what has been consciously experienced.

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind... When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.

In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.

My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

If you remember better times you know they were lies, because they led to this

You used to be alive, now you're almost mythic.

I want to go back to where I once lived, but it isn't there anymore; that one of me isn't here.

We could never sit at this kitchen table without our terrible and beautiful past and our poems that tell us who we are.

I have just transcended my epoch; I am alive outside written memory.

the litup soul/self I have been From time to time I can't remember

which I remember from my human past and from longing.

You return here at night when you dream. A part of your waking self remains

I don't want this part where I don't know if I've dreamed it or not.

I only remember that it all hurt.

I expect to hear voices forever, even after I'm dead.

somewhere you know but never quite remember

I want to know why my loves had to die.

I don't remember how to speak for myself anymore

I have so many ideas! I'm so full of thought I can't remember what I look like.

Evaporated I've never been there.

I won't read this after I've written it, any kind of past life pains me now