Quotes About Memory

I remember the difficulty we had in the beginning replacing magnetic cores in memories and eventually we had both cost and performance advantages. But it wasn't at all clear in the beginning.

The memories were so vivid that the book dropped from my hand and my eyes filled with tears.

the possibility of our deliverance lies not in the future but in the past, in a mystery beyond memory.

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a chest, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?

No matter how hard the times at home may have been, in the ashes of every past there were a few cinders of memory that glowed with warmth—...

I don't remember much, which is a kind of mercy,I suppose. I see it in patterns. Sometimes it's like a scribble on a wall- no matter how many times you paint over it, a bit of it always comes through, but not enough to put together the whole. I try not to think about it too much.

whether he was with her or not, her voice had always been in his head;

History is notoriously not about the past.

Look, we don't love like flowers with only one season behind us; when we love, a sap older than memory rises in our arms. O girl, it's like this: inside us we haven't loved just some one in the future, but a fermenting tribe; not just one child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins of mountains, the dry riverbed of former mothers, yes, and all that soundless landscape under its clouded or clear destiny—girl, all this came before you.

When I look into my past the river seems to meet my eyes, staring back, as if to ask, Do you recognize me, wherever you are? Recognition

Tridib often said of her, the inventions she lived in moved with her, so that although she had lived in many places, she had never travelled at all.

Kad sam bio dijete, nadao sam se da ?u kad odrastem postati knjiga. Ne književnik, nego knjiga. Ljude se može pobiti kao mrave, pa ni književnike nije teško ubiti. Ali za knjigu, ?ak i ako je sustavno unište, postoji šansa da se neki primjerak spasio i da ?e nastaviti živjeti na polici, živjeti nijemim životom na nekoj od zaboravljenih polica u nekoj zaba?enoj knjižnici, u Rejkjaviku, Valladolidu ili Vancouveru.

And what if ever on some distant day a memory comes to you of an old familiar whiff or the sound of dogs barking far off or a driving hailstorm at dawn and you suddenly fail to grasp what it is you have done, what madness might have possessed you, what devil lured you from your home to the end of the world?

To pick a modern image we once heard, but can't remember where: life is like driving a car with its front window opaque. All you have to go by are your rearview mirrors.

Memory deludes me. I have just remembered something that I completely forgot after it happened. I remembered it again when I was about sixteen, and then I forgot it again. And this morning I remembered not the event itself but the previous recollection, which itself was more than forty years ago, as though an old moon were reflected in a windowpane from which it was reflected in a lake, from where memory draws not the reflection itself, which no longer exists, but only its whitened bones.

Even after she disappeared, it did not settle at once, but continued to make waves and produced a trickling, rustling sound that Shmuel hoped would not die away too soon.

The grown-ups who still remembered usually chose to stay silent. To deny. To pretend they'd forgotten

You will live in me always. Your words, your heart, your soul are all part of me. My heart is full of your memories. Thank you for the gift of your life. I will never forget you.

I read about a famous mystery writer who worked for one week in a department store. One day she saw a woman come in and buy a doll. The mystery writer found out the woman's name, and took a bus to New Jersey to see where the woman lived. That was all. Years later, she referred to this woman as the love of her life. It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.

A famous artist is approached by a student. You don't remember me, the student says correctly, but years ago you said something that changed my life. You said, 'Photography is death.' After that, says the student, I threw out my camera. I began again. I want to thank you for changing my life. Leave me alone, says the artist. Photography is life.

Tell me things I won't mind forgetting, she said. 'Make it useless stuff or skip it.

When she sees him, Holly says, it's like the sunsets at the beach--once the sun drops, the sand chills quickly. Then it's like a lot of times that were good ten minutes ago and don't count now.

I remember thinking: There will never come a time when I will not be thinking of this. And I was right. And I was wrong

I was with a girlfriend of mine last night and we were talking about David Foster Wallace. It's been three years since he killed himself, I said. And she said, Yep. Waited a beat. And he's still dead.