Quotes About Memory

We swear we see each other, but all we are ever able to make out is a tiny porthole view of an ocean. We think we remember the past, but our memories are as fantastic and flimsy as dreams. It's so easy to hate the pretty one, worship the genius, love the rockstar, trust the good girl. That's never their only story.

Because I saw, suddenly, how it would always be for me, Sam's life unfolding like slides in an old projector I'd always be clicking through in the dark, stunning leaps forward in time--but never the uncut reel.

?nsanlar affetmeyi bilmeli ama asla unutmamal?d?r.

Hue had become a city of the dead.

And while each death would echo loudly halfway around the world, hurling families and even whole communities into grief, often with shattering consequences for generations, in Hue there wasn't even time to stop and look, much less grieve.

If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top of the news; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's headlines in the press of today's new hate and panic.

I took my morning walk, I took my evening walk, I ate something, I thought something, I wrote, I napped and dreamt something too, and with all that something, I still have nothing because so much of something has always been and always will be you. I miss you.

And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.

Doesn't rain make a memory more intimate?

What is memory but a story about how we have lived?

Much of what we think of as "relational knowing"—joking around, expressing affection, and making friends5—is based in this kind of memory. We know how to do it without thinking about it. It does not require deliberate attention or verbal processing, yet it is intrinsic to who we are.

But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid.

Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don't have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or the biscuits again. And a timetable is a map of time, except that if you don't have a timetable, time isn't there like the landing and the garden and the route to school.

How do you remember this stuff? But why had she forgotten? That was the real question.

She thought about the men with bows and arrows. They were really here, weren't they, once upon a time. And mammoths and ladies in crinolines and Spitfires overhead. Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing becoming another thing. Like a flame on the end of a match. Wood turning into smoke. If only we could burn brighter. A barn roaring in the night.

You look around and it occurs to you that this isn't real, this is only a memory, that you could let go and topple into that great windy nothing and it wouldn't matter. What frightens you is that for a couple of seconds you can't remember where the present is and how to get back there.

Depending on yet more men seems to her like part of the problem. Better to rely on their own invisibility. A memory of that deer standing on the path then sprinting away. The sisterhood of idiot creatures, the wisdom that comes with knowing you could be prey.

And one of the friends died of fear that very nice and the other two were broken men for the rest of their lives.

But they are different because the pictures in my head are all pictures of things which really happened. But other people have pictures in their heads of things which aren't real and didn't happen.

She can feel it all, centuries of habitation, paint over paint over plaster over stone.

He wanted to make her feel good. She couldn't remember the last time someone had done that. He

But what is the answer? Armed guards? Depending on yet more men seems to her like part of the problem. Better to rely on their own invisibility. A memory of that deer standing on the path then sprinting away. The sisterhood of idiot creatures, the wisdom that comes with knowing you could be prey.

What would your mother think about that?" which is stupid because Mother is dead and you can't say anything to people who are dead and dead people can't think.

Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.