Quotes About Memory

I tried to conjure Ali's frozen face, to REALLY see his tranquil eyes, but time can be a greedy thing - sometimes it steals all the details for itself.

I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan.

But Laila knew that her future was no match for her brothers' past. They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. The parchment on which Mammy meant to ink their legends.

There were times when, like a word on the tip of her tongue, Mariam's face eluded her. But now, in this place, it's easy to summon Mariam behind the lids of her eyes.

Almost ten years. But, for a moment, standing there with Tariq in the sunlight, it was as though those years had never happened. Her parents' deaths, her marriage to Rasheed, the killings, the rockets, the Taliban, the beatings, the hunger, even her children, all of it seemed like a dream, a bizarre detour, a mere interlude between that last afternoon together and this moment.

Once, watching an old film, Lemar had asked Idris if he had been alive back when the world was in black and white. The memory brings a smile. He kisses his sons' cheeks.

With the passing of time, she'd tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip. She would not miss him as much as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion.

Time makes us forget.

There are women locked in my womb forever, the memory of their birth. All I can do now is liberate the fruit of their wombs. And it may be too late.

But as much as I tried, I couldn't forget my past. The events that had shaped me continued to weigh on my soul.

For the remainder of her days, my grandmother lay in bed, staring past the window into space. It was if a part of her mind had died before her body had time to give up.

Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you—whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others—not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.

She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-- nothing, now, but bones.

Paul, careening down the slide with his arms out flung, and Phoebe, present somehow through her absence.

she had only made things worse. His angry eyes met hers in the mirror, and she remembered his soft plump infant hand pressed against her cheek, his laughter trilling through the rooms. Another boy altogether, that child. Where had he gone?

she seemed not to worry very much about ghings, but rather to accept the world as a fascinating and unusual place where anything might happen memory keepers daugher

The undead did not love, but they remembered love with a savage loyalty.

The demon had trouble remembering what she was doing, but she was powerful, sort of the crazy Wendy of the lost lord-of-the-flies boys.

We don't forget, Rachel, and it's not as if it was our ancestors who were betrayed. It was us.

You can't forget anything," I said, watching the words vanish into nothing. "And even if you do, it always comes back to bitch-slap you in the morning.

It hurts," he whispered, his hands falling to his sides. "All the time. Even when I try." Tears warmed my eyes, and I pulled back so I could look at him. "It will stop one day," I said as I gave his shoulders a squeeze. "Even without your trying, and then you'll feel guilty. After that, you'll wake up one morning, remember her, and smile.

I wanted that feeling back—even if it was a lie. Just for a night, so I wouldn't forget how it felt until I found it again.

I don't want to live not remembering why I love. (Ivy Tamwood)

Travel this country and you move through more than geography; you move through time.