Quotes About Memory

A story isn't about a moment in time, a story is about the moment in time.

I carry my roots with me all the time rolled up, I use them as my pillow.

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you?

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.

When this you see, remember me, And bear me in your mind. Let all the world say what they may. Speak of me as you find Ã¢â'¬Â¦ —Elizabeth Diane Downs, 1983

You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms...

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.

The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . . But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house.

Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again--

But Marisa already knew the answer and it was too late for recrimination. The chance of even a rational discussion of the problem was forever shut out of Mama's brain. A brutal bastard was steadily sucking the intelligence and the very life from the mother who had once been witty, wise and loving. The scourge had a name Marisa had come to equate with hell: Alzheimer's Disease.

Words can be said in a moment that will not be forgotten in years.

My mother spoke, alive again inside my brain...She spoke and I listened to her, because I was afraid if I didn't her voice would gradually fade away, an evanescent wraith of a thing that would narrow to a pinpoint of light and then go out, lost forever, like the Tinker Bell if no one clapped for her.

My doctor says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, she doesn't believe our memories flag because of a drop in estrogen but because of how crowded it in the drawers of our minds.

I read and reread and recommended and rarely rejected, became one of those readers who will read trashy stories as long as they're not too terrible--well, even perhaps the truly terrible ones--and will reread something she's already read, even if it's something like a detective novel, when you'd suspect that knowing who had really killed the countess would materially detract from the experience. (It doesn't, and besides, I often can't remember who the murderer was in the first place.)

and when nanas die they leave grandchildren and perhaps a trace memory of being coddled, kissed, attended to, and loved, of being chased across the lawn or rocked in the middle of the night or taken seriously. In Nanaville there is always in the back of my mind the understanding that I am building a memory out of spare parts and that, someday, that memory will be all that's left of me.

I want to be able to remember it all, not just the books but the newsrooms and the playgroups and the bad jokes and the holiday traditions. In my mind I can walk through the house where I grew up even though I have not been inside it for decades . . . I want to be able to walk through the house of my own life until my life is done. I want to hold on to who and what I have been even as both become somehow inevitably less.

I don't care that much about getting older, but I don't want to be forgotten, because to be remembered is to live and to be loved.

I looked around and it was like I was seeing everything frozen into a still photograph, like I was seeing my whole life but in one of those shots you look and later think, Yeah, that's what it was like, once upon a time. Once upon a time ago.

In Nanaville there is always in the back of my mind the understanding that I am building a memory out of spare parts and that, someday, that memory will be all that's left of me.

He couldn't remember at first where he was, just knew by the fragile fog of the summer light that it was early, that his alarm clock would sleep longer than he had.