Quotes About Memory

and then I would think about when the girls were little, but they were somehow not always happy memories for me, because I seemed only to remember how William had been cheating on me for so many years during that time, and so what I might otherwise have thought of as a good memory was not one.

William, who had really said remarkably little since the baby had been born, said to me that night, "You know, Lucy, I think I would feel better if she had been a boy." It was as though something dropped deep inside of me, and I did not say anything about it. But I have always remembered that.

Nothing is long ago.

Isabelle, at different places and moments in the years to come, would sometimes be surrounded by silence and find in herself only the repeated word "Amy." "Amy, Amy"—for this was it, her heart's call, her prayer. "Amy," she would think, "Amy," remembering this day's chilly, golden air.

At David's service in a funeral home in the city—which was then, and is now, all a blur to me—I do remember Becka whispering to me, "Dad wishes he could sit up here with us." "He said that to you?" I asked, turning to look at her, and she nodded solemnly. Poor William, I thought.

But an ache stayed inside her. And a faint reverberating hum of something close to joy lived on the outer edges of her memory, some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore.

we drove I suddenly had a visceral memory of what a hideous thing marriage was for me at times those years

Throughout my marriage to William, I had had the image—and this was true even when Catherine was alive, and more so after she died—so often I had the private image of William and me as Hansel and Gretel, two small kids lost in the woods looking for the breadcrumbs that could lead us home.

It was the sudden memory of Jane Houlton in the waiting room that caused Olive to walk to the bed—the freedom of that ordinary banter, because Jack, in the doctor's office, had needed her, had given her a place in the world.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

Of all cold words of tongue or penThe worst are these: "I knew him when—"

Once lead this people into war," Wilson ruminated, "and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance . . .

The lesson Scott taught the modern world was that the past does not have to die or vanish: it can live on, in a nation's memory, and help to nourish its posterity.

That out of sight is out of mind is true of most we leave behind

Ahora sabemos que el trauma del nacimiento en realidad está codificado y almacenado en el sistema nervioso.

Het is niks en het is alles. Meer stelt geluk nu eenmaal niet voor. Ik heb het gekend, daar gaat het om. Gek dat het geheugen zo veel minder indruk maakt dan ellende.

Klinken omdat het verleden opnieuw wordt geboren, dat is zoiets als, als.. als het vieren van een aanslag op de toekomst.

Als ik op mijn geheugen af moet gaan heeft een halve eeuw Indië korter geduurd dan een willekeurige valkenjacht op Het Loo, het bezoek van Adeline Renselaar en haar feestcommissie langer dan een weekeinde in Scheveningen. De archieven van je geest kennen geen index, hooguit een paar steekwoorden.

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.

For many months he had occasional fits of recollection, both cold and hot; but the bridge of time, gradually lengthening, made those dreadful and delicious images grow more and more indistinct, till at last they all passed into that wonderland which a youth looks back upon in amazement, not knowing why this used to be a symbol of terror or that of joy.

What will happen to the world when you leave it? Nothing, in any case, will remain of what is now visible.

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.