Quotes About Memory

It was more than knowing or not knowing, beside stillness and shouts, memory and images of the future.

If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.

Leven is eigenlijk niets anders dan afscheid nemen van leven. Dat is de kern van het leven, en liefde is afscheid nemen van liefde - het is allemaal één groot afscheidsfeest. Het was een mooi afscheidsfeest, maar ik moet nu naar huis, even uitslapen, de afwas doen van verleden week. Begrijp je?

De bloem van de eeuwige jeugd', mompelt hij. Er dringen zich meer herinneringen aan hem op, ook aangename. In het moeras van zijn geheugen zitten ook mooie herinneringen verstopt. Als je je geluk kunt herinneren, dan heeft het bestaan.

A photograph is a biography of a moment.

No matter what I accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.

In reality, childhood is deep and rich. It's vital, mysterious, and profound. I remember my OWN childhood vividly; I knew terrible things, but I knew I mustn't let the adults *know* I knew... it would scare them.

I'm not talking about YOUR book now, but look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.

Anja? What is to tell? Everywhere I look I'm seeing Anja... From my good eye, from my glass eye, if they're open or they're close, always I'm thinking on Anja.

[History is] petrified imagination.

Even better, research shows that we tend to see important past events—even undesirable ones at the time—as net positives over time.

But it doesn't work: they forget you.

It is often said of me - some intend it as a compliment, others as a complaint - that I write about a single subject: the Holocaust. I have no quarrel with that. Why shouldn't I accept, with certain qualifications, the place assigned to me on the shelves of libraries?

I've been into horses as far back as I can remember. There is a particular kind here in America called the 'quarter horse' that I'm very interested in.

You don't forget crises and neither does the Queen.

The reason there's a question mark on my front door is just in case I forget my address.

There are media houses which put headline with a question mark, and that is how they can get away without taking the accountability of the allegation. They put the question mark. Let's analyze it a little - a common reader will not remember the question mark: they will remember the allegation.

People will forget me pretty quick.

He was not a runner, my father, but he was quick. I always remember it was very difficult to escape from him when he was angry. If he wanted to beat us he would always catch us. Even me, he could always catch me.

When your entire brain is active, that means you are taking everything in through all sense perception. Your entire memory bank and your instincts are in play, so you make much quicker and more intelligent choices.

I am blessed that I quickly forget things.

Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.

The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up.

Peoria is such a seemingly quintessential American city, and I had always wanted to draw on that in either my fiction or in nonfiction. The Midwest is also a landscape that I have always been infatuated with, perhaps because it's the first one I can truly remember.