Quotes About Memory

Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.

I hear the theme from 'Psycho' every time I take a shower. I lock the door.

A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

The very first time I ever heard anything of mine on the radio, I was in New Jersey, and I was in my teens. I did my first record, which was an old standard called 'My Mother's Eyes.' It was the old Georgie Jessel theme. I heard it on local radio out of Newark. And it was very exciting!

I'm a melody guy. To me, that's a musical souvenir people take from a movie. They remember a theme or a feeling, and if they've had a good or bad experience it evokes that sensation whenever they hear it again.

I think one of the primary themes in my work is the paradox of memory, at once fundamental to our sense of who we are and yet elusive, ever-changing, fragmentary. One way to look at this is to say that, therefore, we ourselves are elusive, ever-changing and fragmentary to ourselves.

There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me.

I saw your daddy tonight," Franci whispered. "There's a reason you're so beautiful.

He stopped chopping again and, looking at her, asked, "What made you decide?" "Bear's new leg. That old blue plaid flannel..." "Old?" Preacher asked, smiling slightly. "That was a perfectly good shirt." *

What were you thinking while that happened, Ian?" Before he could come up with an answer, the truth came out. "I was thinking, thank God I didn't forget how that was done." She laughed, rubbing his back. "What were you thinking?" he asked. "I was thinking, thank God he didn't forget how that was done." But

Thinking of her violation filled him with a kind of rage that had never been visited on him before. Although she was a beautiful woman and strong, his vision kept mixing her up with the vulnerable woman he'd taken on a picnic a couple of months ago. A pretty, young woman who'd just been left by her husband, and was crushed by the betrayal. And what fool would give her up? he thought. It was beyond him. The

And he thought—Just give me time. I'm going to get that picture put in storage. *

She shook her head against his shoulder. She inhaled his scent, remembered the lusty night that had gotten them here. She closed her eyes. Such a sweet memory…. And he felt one of them kick him in her belly. He pulled her closer, tighter, wanting more of that.

In the morning when she woke, he had gone. He left a note. "Sweetheart. Selling wood, plowing some roads. I won't be too long. Ian." "Sweetheart," she whispered to herself. She folded it in half and quarters and found a safe place in her wallet to preserve it. Forever.

go of me. The only way you can honor my memory is with your happiness.

One continues to learn things in life, then promptly forget them.

There. You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me.

Sillage, I thought. The lingering impression of a kiss having ended.

The pause in conversation when you're about to introduce someone but you've forgotten their name. There's a word for it. In Scotland, it's called a tartle.

I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, I'll have a body full of cells that were never sick. sbut it also means that the parts of me that knee and loved Sadie will disappear. I'll still remember loving her, but it'll be a different me who loved her. And maybe that is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency.

The dead never listen when you want to tell them anything.

It's awful, ins't it, how I remember crap like that? Tiny, insignificant details in the midst of a massive disaster.

She tasted like buried treasure and swing sets and coffee.

There's a word for it," she told me, "in French, for when you have a lingering immersion of something having passed by. Sillage. I always think of it when a firework explores and lights up the smoke from the ones before it.