Quotes About Memory

we are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us. There is no escaping that, not for any of us.

Man cannot grieve as dogs do. But we grieve for many years.

When I wallow in something dead to reawaken the savor of it, you rebuke me.

I'd rather be forgotten for the things people think I've done. And I'd give it all if I could forget the things I failed to do.

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it.

upended my memory as if it were a crock of oddments

The past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But we grieve for many years.

Your mind will remember how to do something and you will think you can still do it. Your body will try. And fail.

I lose my place in time. It seems to me that we have come this way before, done these things before, perhaps even shared these words before. Sometimes I believe it so strongly that I think that today is actually a memory or a dream.

Humans die and the memories of who they were and what they did fade. But stone remembers its task.

The days we shared I alone would remember now. I suddenly felt less real.

My father had already forgotten him. He had suddenly

Despite their efforts to keep me from her, I saw Molly everywhere. Oh, not her person, no, but in the scent of the fat bayberry candle burning so sweetly, in the cloak left draped over a chair, even the honey in the honey cakes tasted of Molly to me.

History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.

Nothing's forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten.

This was a rare treat: the wonderful sound of memory filled happiness.

Me parece que esto es lo que busca la memoria: no en sí la permanencia, sino una relevancia permanente.

Our stories say that of all the plants, wiingaashk, or sweetgrass, was the very first to grow on the earth, its fragrance a sweet memory of Skywoman's hand. Accordingly, it is honored as one of the four sacred plants of my people. Breathe in its scent and you start to remember things you didn't know you'd forgotten. Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we "remember to remember

Old-growth cultures, like old-growth forests, have not been exterminated. The land holds their memory and the possibility of regeneration. They are not only a matter of ethnicity or history, but of relationships born out of reciprocity between land and people.

Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we "remember to remember

The still air smelled of sweetgrass hanging from the rafters. What words can capture that smell? The fragrance of your mother's newly washed hair as she holds you close, the melancholy smell of summer slipping into fall, the smell of memory that makes you close your eyes for a moment, and then a moment longer.

I like to imagine that they were the first flowers I saw, over my mother's shoulder, as the pink blanket slipped away from my face and their colors flooded my consciousness. I've heard that early experience can attune the brain to certain stimuli, so that they are processed with greater speed and certainty, so that they can be used again and again, so that we remember. Love at first sight.