Quotes About Memory

No, I said. I didn't remember that. There was so much to remember, sometimes the best thing was to forget.

Our minds may be like some computers that can have a lifetime of wrong information stored in them.

The saddest thing that can happen to a person is to find out their memories are lies.

Now that so many years have passed, now that I remember with the benefit of an understanding I didn't then have, I think of that conversation and it seems implausible that its importance didn't hit me in the face. (And I tell myself at the same time that we're terrible judges of the present moment, maybe because the present doesn't actually exist: all is memory, this sentence that I just wrote is already a memory, this word is a memory that you, reader, just read).

Remembering tires a person out. this is something they don't teach us. Exercising one's memory is an exhausting activity. It draws our energy and wears down our muscles.

People are the same all over the world, I imagine, people who react like that to their countries conspiracies: turning them into tales that are told, like children's fables, and also into place in the memory or the imagination, a place where we go as tourists, to revive nostalgia or to try to find something we've lost.

Childhood doesn't exist for children; however, for adults childhood is that former country we lost one day and which we futilely seek to recover by inhabiting it with diffuse or nonexistent memories, which in general are nothing but shadows of other dreams.

I was also surprised by the alacrity and dedication we devote to the damaging exercise of remembering, which after all brings nothing good and serves only to hinder our normal functioning, like those bags of sand athletes tie around their calves for training.

And I tell myself at the same time that we're terrible judges of the present moment, maybe because the present doesn't actually exist: all is memory, this sentence that I just wrote is already a memory, this word is a memory that you, reader, just read.

Y me digo al mismo tiempo que somos pésimos jueces del momento presente, tal vez porque el presente no existe en realidad: todo es recuerdo, esta frase que acabo de escribir ya es recuerdo, es recuerdo esta palabra que usted, lector, acaba de leer.)

Esa noche volvieron a sucederse los sueños. ¿Por qué ese recordar intenso de tantas cosas? ¿Por qué no simplemente la muerte y no esa música tierna del pasado?

La memoria, a esta edad mía, es engañosa; por eso yo le doy gracias a Dios, porque si acaba con todas mis facultades, ya no pierdo mucho, ya que casi no me queda ninguna.

Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo ...

En lo más íntimo, Pedro Páramo nació de una imagen y fue la búsqueda de un ideal que llamé Susana San Juan. Susana San Juan no existió nunca: fue pensada a partir de una muchachita a la que conocí brevemente cuando yo tenía tres años. Ella nunca lo supo y no hemos vuelto a encontramos en lo que llevo de vida.

Y en días de aire se ve al viento arrastrando hojas de árboles, cuando aquí, como tu ves, no hay árboles. Los hubo en algún tiempo, porque si no ¿de dónde saldrían esas hojas?

Y Natalia se olvidó de mí desde entonces. Yo sé cómo le brillaban antes los ojos como si fueran charcos alumbrados por la luna. Pero de pronto se destiñeron, se le borró la mirada como si la hubiera revolcado en la tierra. Y pareció no ver ya nada.

Siempre vivió ella suspirando por Comala, por el retorno; pero jamás volvió. Ahora yo vengo en su lugar.

Their eyes met; neither would forget.

We push away the bad memories, Irina said. Bleak sadness deadened her voice. We tell ourselves is better not to remember. It is not better. Better to remember everything, even pain.

Nancy Mairs, in Remembering the Bone House

Vivian Gornick's memoir Fierce Attachments

Gore Vidal in his memoir Palimpsest.

a story can stay buried in my memory for years and years, but the minute it surfaces into consciousness as a story idea, it is likely to get lost. If I don't grab it as it begins to form itself as a narrative, it can become permanently erased, and even if I remember the general subject matter, the voice that started narrating in my mind eludes me.

Childhood romances always seem so real, so enduring, when we are separated from the object of our affection. But usually, when we return, we find that our dreams and memories quiet surpassed reality. -Lady Anne, Whitney's aunt