Quotes About Memory

I knew then the answer to my question; the question I'd asked myself many times during this war, and many more times since it ended. When would I be able to put the war behind me? When would I be able to forget it? And I knew now that the answer was simple. Never. I never would. Some things end. But war never does.

Then the day came when we stopped playing. We'd gone a couple of months without our usual games, but a few days into the school holidays I got my dolls out and tried to start up again. And it had all gone. The magic didn't work any more. I could barely even remember how we'd done it, but I tried to recapture the mood, the storylines, the way the dolls had moved and thought and spoken. But now it was like reading a meaningless book.

My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.

Oblivioni sacrum [Sacred to oblivion].

In the West, the past is very close. In many places, it still believes it's the present.

By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone. . . But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on

I want you so bad I'll go back on the things I believe. There I just said it, I'm scared you'll forget about me.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn saw sunset glow Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields Take up our quarrel with the foe; To you, from falling hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below We are the Dead Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow/Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders Fields Take up our quarrel with the foe To you from failing hands we throw The torch be yours to hold it high If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep/though poppies grow In Flanders Fields

The older I get, the better I used to be.

You were a beautiful child," he heard himself saying, and for a moment he did not know to whom he spoke. Light swam before his eyes, found shape, and became the face of his daughter, lined and somber and worn with care.

Repeat to remember.

Like all the stories I wrote at that time, it was based on an unusual atmosphere that had impressed me in real life.

On the way to the train station, my mother said that she wasn't going to wash my sheets after I left. Sometimes, she said, she slept in my bed for one or two nights, because the bed still smelled like me. She smiled conspiratorially, and I felt my heart constrict.

The hours I had spent like that, making my fingers simper at each other. I would never write about that. It was enough I had wasted the time once. I would never waste more time by writing about it.

And yet, the second time had blocked out the first time, and I didn't like to think that it hadn't been the first time.

At the same time, it seemed certain to me that someday I would really want to hear his voice and wouldn't be able to, and I would think back to the time that he had invited me to call him, and it would seem as incomprehensible as an invitation to speak to the dead.

There was the ocean, like a recurring character you forgot about for long stretches.

At the same time, it seemed certain to me that someday I would really want to hear his voice and wouldn't be able to, and I would think back to the time that he had invited me to call him, and it would seem as incomprehensible as an invitation to speak to the dead.

Every life contains a novel.

She wanted to unzip her body and step out of it. She wanted to be attached to a machine that would erase her memory, obliterate her guilt, wipe her clean.

There was a memory for everything, India realized; it was pointless to try to escape the memories.

Shooter's absence is more powerful than Benji's presence.

The giddy, head-over-heels infatuation faded; it mellowed into something else. You got married, then divorced. Or your husband killed himself. Or your brain synapses became encased in gooey plaque and you started putting the frying pan in the icebox instead of in the cabinet where it belonged.