Quotes About Memory

I'm the one erased. Or I guess I'm not even that, because the thing about being erased is that first you have to leave a mark.

In AP Bio, 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. But it also means that the parts of me that knew and loved Sadie will disappear. I'll still remember loving her, but it'll be a different me who loved her. And maybe this is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency.

There's a difference between missing someone and mourning them…Because that's all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current beats against you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.

the thing about being erased is that first you have to leave a mark.

That 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.

Delete," he said. "I keep telling you." But I couldn't. Even though I wasn't sure what the point was anymore. No one kept in touch, they just kept up. And then, when they couldn't keep up anymore, they forgot. I

There's a specific energy to different moments, and once you lose it, it can't be recaptured. You've got to record it, or you've got nothing.

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.

because we were in love with the same dead girl.

Well, I think it's beautiful. A word for remembering small moments destined to be lost.

But her window stayed dark after I replied, even though she knew I was there, watching. So I went to sleep thinking of her, of the curve of her back in a light cotton dress, of her hair twisted up into its crown of braids, of her, leaping form the zenith of the plastic swing set and clearing the sandbox, turning a neat lap around the whole of Eastwood, California, while I stood there, trapped in the dreariness of a it all, numbly watching.

How did people keep hold of reality under communist conditions? How do they know not only what to remember but how to remember it? The answer was to create distinct small communities—especially families and religious fellowships—in which it was possible both to speak truthfully and to embody truth.

No culture, and no person, can remember everything. A culture's memory is the result of its collective sifting of facts to produce a story—a story that society tells itself to remember who it is. Without collective memory, you have no culture, and without a culture, you have no identity.

The more totalitarian a regime's nature, the more it will try to force people to forget their cultural memories. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the role of Winston Smith within the Ministry of Information is to erase all newspaper records of past events to reflect the current political priorities of the Party. This, said the ex-communist Polish intellectual Leszek Ko?akowski, reflects "the great ambition of totalitarianism—the total possession and control of human memory.

Cultural memory constitutes the stories, events, people, and other phenomena that a society chooses to remember as the building blocks of its collective identity. A nation's gods, its heroes, its villains, its landmarks, its art, its music, its holidays—all these things are part of its cultural memory.

Create Small Fortresses of Memory Figes's observation points to one source of resistance: the family and the cultural memories it passes on. Paul Connerton highlights another: religion.

A nation's gods, its heroes, its villains, its landmarks, its art, its music, its holidays—all these things are part of its cultural memory.

Memory of the past conditions how they experience the present—that is, how they grasp its meaning, how they are to understand it, and what they are supposed to do in it. No culture, and no person, can remember everything. A culture's memory is the result of its collective sifting of facts to produce a story—a story that society tells itself to remember who it is. Without collective memory, you have no culture, and without a culture, you have no identity.

Memory, historical and otherwise, is a weapon of cultural self-defense. History is not just what is written in textbooks. History is in the stories we tell ourselves about who we were and who we are. History is embedded in the language we use, the things we make, and the rituals we observe.

We have to tell our stories—in literature, film, theater, and other media—but we must also manifest cultural memory in communal deeds—in mourning and in celebration, in solemn remembrance and festal joy.

No regime is trying to steal our cultural memory and Christian identity from us. We are giving it away ourselves.

A collective loss of historical memory—not just memory of communism but memory of our shared cultural past—within the West is bound to have a devastating effect on our future.

worldwide throughout the ages. Familiarize yourself with their stories, and teach them to your children. These stories are near the core of the lived Christian experience, and form an essential part of Christian cultural memory. Learn them, so you will know when and how to live them.

These long years later it is worse for I remember what it was as well as what it might have been.