Quotes About Memory

Bishop on "At the Fishhouses" At the last minute, after I'd had a chance to do a little research in Cape Breton, I found I'd said codfish scales once when it should have been herring scales. I hope they corrected it all right. 2 Quite a few lines of "At the Fishhouses" came to me in a dream, and the scene— which was real enough, I'd recently been there—but the old man and the conversation, etc., were all in a later dream

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.

If one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past.

It is queer to be in a place when someone has gone. It is not two other places, the place that they were there in, and the place that was there before they came. I can't get used to this third place or to staying behind.

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

The furniture would have missed you? Furniture's knowing all right. Not much gets past the things in a room, I daresay, and chairs and tables don't go to the grave so soon. Every time I take the soft cloth to that stuff in the drawingroom, I could say, 'Well, you know a bit more'.

We observe small rites, but we defend ourselves against that terrible memory that is stronger than will. We defend ourselves from the rooms, the scenes, the objects that make for hallucination, that make the senses start up and fasten upon a ghost. We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

His experiences and hers became harder and harder to tell apart; everything gathered behind them into a common memory - though singly each of them might, must, exist, decide, act; all things done alone came to be no more than a simulcra of behaviour: they waited to live again till they were together...Every love has a poetic relevance of its own...

If one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past.

All the days that go by only make me seem to be getting further and further away from the day I last saw Eddie, not nearer and nearer the day I shall see him again.

But I should never write what had happened down. One's nature is to forget, and one ought to go by that. Memory is quite unbearable enough, but even so it leaves out quite a lot.

I am often upset when I meet a person again.

To remember can be at times no more than a cold duty, for we remember only in the limited way that is bearable. We observe small rites, but we defend ourselves against that terrible memory that is stronger than will. We defend ourselves from the rooms, the scenes, the objects that make for hallucination, that make the senses start up and fasten upon a ghost. We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

That was of no consequence now, but you don't easily forget the people you grew up with, and she made a point of listening carefully to him

Inness painted from memory, which is to say that he didn't paint what he saw, but what he remembered. There's a difference. He believed memory was a lens to the soul. It's not the details that matter - the veins on a leaf, say- so much as the implied detail, such as the changing light, the wind, the lone peasant in the distance the sense that something else is going on, some deeper possibilitly ....

If once I loved you, greater is your debt; For certain 'tis you deserved it not, And undeserved love we soon forget...

It seemed as close as yesterday, and as distant as the end of the world.

Did he think to win them over like this? She remembered the boyish charm he had once possessed and wondered where it had gone. Perhaps like a bag of gold dust with an open top, the winds of time had swirled it away in a glittering spiral until there was nothing left but an empty pouch.

Just because you forget the world does not mean that the world forgets you.

All that remains is regret for what might have been. It is like standing in the ashes of a fire you once approached to warm your body a little, but which burned you to the bone instead.

You've changed," he said. "You're-uh-" "Yes?" "Taller." "I hope so. I was ten the last time you saw me." "And your hair's really dark now-and short," he added.

He had told her he would love her forever, but he could not stay with her. From that time on, she couldn't see his glow or hear his voice in her head. Could he still hear her? Was he even aware of her existence?

He can't remeber who he is or where he lives." "Well that's convenient." "Not when it rains.

Aun en la muerte, te quiero junto a mi.