Quotes About Memory

This is how people behave when their dailiness is destroyed, when for a few moments they see, plain and unadorned, one of the great shaping forces of life. Calamity fixes them with her mesmeric eye, and they begin to scoop and paw at the rubble of their days, trying to pluck the memory of the quotidian - a toy, a book, a garment, even a photograph - from the garbage heaps of the irretrievable, of their overwhelming loss.

She says, trying uselessly to console me: 'What are you so long for in your face? Everybody forgets some small things, all the time!' But if small things go, will large things be close behind?

Maybe I should go home. I miss Bombay. But the Bombay I miss isn't there to go home to anymore. This is who we are. We sail away from the place we love and then because we aren't there to love it people go with axes and burning torches and smash and burn and then we say, Oh, too sad. But we abandoned it, left it to our barbarian successors to destroy.

It did not occur to any of them that their decision was born of a colossal sense of entitlement, this notion that they could just step away from yesterday and start tomorrow as if it wasn't a part of the same week, to move beyond memory and roots and language and race into the land of the self-made self, which is another way of saying, America.

We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, though we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep

She allowed history to leave her without trying to hold it back, the way children allow a grand parade to pass, holding it in their memory, making it an unforgettable thing, making it their own

We walk unknowing amid the shadows of our past and, forgetting our history, are ignorant of ourselves.

What is heroism in our time? What is villainy? How much we have forgotten, if we don't know the answer to such questions anymore.

His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a "forgettery" instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before. He, too, seemed to lack a memory for trouble, and woke up remembering only what he yearned for. But he did not act upon his yearning. She had left for America and that was for the best.

History is the consequence not only of people's actions, but also of their forgetfulness.

One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth … that they are, despite everything, acts of love.

since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.

And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings –– by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.

Esta noite, ao rolhar energicamente um frasco com a etiqueta Fórmula Especial n.º 30, cheguei ao fim da minha longa autobiografia: em palavras e em conserva, imortalizei as minhas recordações, ainda que, num como noutro método, seja inevitável a distorção. Temos de viver, receio bem, com as sombras da imperfeição.

la memoria es verdad, porque la memoria tiene su forma de ser especial. Selecciona, elimina, altera, exagera, minimiza, glorifica, y difama también; pero, en definitiva, crea su propia realidad, su versión heterogénea pero normalmente coherente de los acontecimientos; y ningún hombre en su sano juicio confía más

But the truth was that she still felt the past moving like a thrombosis in the blood. It might reach her heart and kill her one of these days.

Once, I belonged to the future. The beloved future of my beloved mother, that was what counted; the present was a means, and the past no more than a dull shard of pottery, a bottle dug up by my father on the beach. Now, however, I belong to yesterday. Is that a line from a song? I forget. Is it?

But the past is not less valuable because it is no longer the present. In fact, it's more important, because forever unseen.

His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a "forgettery" instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before.

Had he, as a child, intuited something and then, afraid of what he had guessed, buried the intuition so deep that he retained no memory of it? And could books, some books, gain access to those hidden chambers and use what they found there?

The past is a broken cardboard suitcase full of photographs of things I no longer wish to see.

Exilatul nu poate uita - si trebuie, prin urmare, sa simuleze - arsita uscata din Desh, fostul si viitorul lui taram, in care pana si Luna este fierbinte si picura ca niste lipii proaspete, date cu unt. O, cat de dor ii e de acea parte a lumii, unde soarele si luna sunt de genul masculin, dar lumina lor dulce si fierbinte are intotdeauna nume femeiesti!...

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come.

Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.