Quotes About Memory

She knew a thing she should have known all along: that dead people are like wax memory-you take them in your mind, you shape and squeeze them, push a bump here, stretch one out there, pull the body tall, shape and reshape, handle, sculp and finish a man-memory until he's all out of kilter.

Somewhere, a book said once, all the talk ever talked, all the songs ever sung, still lived, had vibrated way out in space and if you could travel to Far Centauri you could hear George Washington talking in his sleep or Caesar surprised at the knife in his back.

Once the bomb release was yanked, it was finished. Now, a full three seconds, all of the time in history, before the bombs struck, the enemy ships themselves were gone half around the visible world, like bullets in which a savage islander might not believe because they were invisible; yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions, and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies.

We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting on the graves of all the poor ones who died before us...and some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest Goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up

Colonel Freeleigh? said Douglas softly. There was something in his silence that made them all shut up their mouths. They approached, almost on tiptoe. Douglas, bent down, disengaged the phone from the old man's now quite cold fingers. Douglas lifted the receiver to his own ear, listened. Above the static he heard a strange, a far, a final sound. Two thousand miles away, the closing of a window.

Books were only a receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we would forget.

Cuando yo era pequeño mis padres me llevaron a la ciudad de México. Siempre recordaré el comportamiento de mi padre, vulgar y fatuo. A mi madre no le gustaba tampoco aquella gente porque eran morenos y no se bañaban a menudo. Mi hermana ni les hablaba. Solo a mí me gustaban realmente. Y puedo imaginarme a mi madre y mi padre aquí en Marte haciendo otra vez lo mismo.

Que la gente intervenga en concursos donde haya que recordar las palabras de las canciones más populares, o los nombres de las capitales de los Estados, o cuánto maíz cosechó Iowa el último año. Llénalos de noticias incombustibles. Sentirán que la información los ahoga, pero se creerán inteligentes.

Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us

ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said

It's not books you need, it is some of the things that once were in books. (...) Books were only the type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid to forget. (...) The magic is only in what books say.

We carry our homes in our heads.

you'll find as you get older the days kind of blur ... can't tell one from the other...

Books were only one type of recepticle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.There is nothing magical in them, at all.The magic is only in what books say, how they stitches the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

I libri erano soltanto una specie di veicolo, di ricettacolo in cui riponevamo tutte le cose che temevamo di poter dimenticare. Non c'è nulla di magico, nei libri; la magia sta solo in ciò che essi dicono, nel modo in cui hanno cucito le pezze dell'Universo per mettere insieme così un mantello onde rivestirci.

Para qué recordar lo que no me sirve?

Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There's nothing magical in them at all. Magic is only what books mean, what books say. How they stitch the patterns of the universe together into one garment for us.

It became a game that I took to with immense gusto: to see how much I could remember about dandelions themselves, or picking wild grapes with my father and brother, rediscovering the mosquito-breeding ground rain barrel by the side bay window, or searching out the smell of the gold-fuzzed bees that hung around our back porch grape arbor. Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

but we've got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation.

Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

Charlie scratched inside his left ear. Everybody. The first war in history where everybody won. I can't figure it. So long. He went on up the sidewalk, crossed the front yard, opened the door of his house, waved, and was gone. There goes Charlie, said Douglas.

Chacun doit laisser quelque chose derrière soi à sa mort, disait mon grand-père. Un enfant, un livre, un tableau, une maison. (...) Quelque chose que la main a touché d'une façon ou d'une autre pour que l'âme ait un endroit où aller après la mort.