Quotes About Memory

Did he know already that he would get a sunflower when he was buried? The murderer would own something even when he was dead…And I?

Pero yo, incluso mucho antes de haber tenido tiempo de meditar detenidamente, comprendí que no debíamos olvidar. SI todos nosotros olvidábamos, podía volver a ocurrir lo mismo al cabo de veinte, cincuenta o cien años

Time is the longest distance between two places.—TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, THE GLASS MENAGERIE (1944)

worst of all, beginning to forget, and knowing that he was forgetting. His mind, though tortured, had always been peculiarly acute: Now, by 1918 and the end of World War I, he seemed to know that his faculties were dimming, that his mind was at last becoming as weakened as his body, and that the sands were running out.

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.

It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.

Surviving one's own life, living on the other side of it like a spectator, is quite comfortable after all. You no longer expect anything, no longer fear anything, and every hour is like a memory.

For Zaza If there are tears in my eyes tonight, is it because you are no longer alive, or because I am? I should dedicate this story to you, but I know that you no longer exist anywhere, and my writing to you like this is pure literary artifice. In any case, this isn't really your story, only one inspired by us. You were not Andrée; nor was I Sylvie, who speaks in my name.

She asked us to raise the curtain that was covering the window and she looked at the golden leaves of the trees. 'How lovely. I shouldn't see that from my flat!' She smiled. And both of us, my sister and I, had the same thought: it was that same smile that had dazzled us when we were little children, the radiant smile of a young woman. Where had it been between then and now?

I]'m reliving it street by street, hour by hour, with the mission of neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that i can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it. That's not easy. It's at once painful and poetic.

Ze had een hekel aan die anonieme hotelkamers waar zoveel mensen waren geweest zonder sporen achter te laten, waar zij zelf ook geen enkel spoor zou achterlaten. Alles blijft precies hetzelfde als ik er niet meer ben. Dat is wat doodgaan is, dacht ze.

I had had a general sort of idea that the life I had behind me was a landscape in which I could wander as I pleased, gradually exploring its winding and its hidden valleys. No. I could repeat names and dates, just as a schoolboy can bring out a carefully learned lesson on a subject he knows nothing about. And at long intervals there arose worn, faded images, as abstract as those in my old French history: they stood out arbitrarily, against a white background.

Hay que esperar siempre que el azúcar se disuelva, que el recuerdo se esfume, que la herida cicatrice, que el sol se oculte, que el fastidio se disipe.

All day long I thought of André, and from time to time there was something that flickered in my brain. Like having been hit on the head, when one's sight is disordered and one sees two different images of the world at different heights, without being able to make out which is above and which below. The two pictures I had, of the past André and the present André, did not coincide.

Je ne tenais pas particulièrement à revoir maman avant sa mort; mais je ne supportais pas l'idée qu'elle ne me reverrait pas. Pourquoi accorder tant d'importance à un instant, puisqu'il n'y aura pas de mémoire? Il n'y aura pas non plus de réparation. J'ai compris pour mon propre compte, jusque dans la moelle de mes os, que dans les derniers moments d'un moribond on puisse enfermer l'absolu.

I realized that I had come here in the hope of once more finding that man so hopelessly in love: I had not seen him for years and years, although this memory lies like a transparency over all the visions I have of him. That evening, for the very reason that the surroundings were the same, the old image, coming into contact with a flesh and blood man smoking a cigarette, fell to dust and ashes, I had a shattering revelation: time goes by. I began to weep.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

It is to the prodigals...that the memory of their Father's house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.

Le temps, par son cours, use et détruit ce qui est temporel. Aussi y-a-t-il plus d'éternité dans le passé que dans le présent. Valeur de l'histoire bien comprise analogue à celle du souvenir dans Proust. Ainsi le passé nous présente quelque chose qui est à la fois réel et meilleur que nous, et qui peut nous tirer ver le haut, ce que l'avenir ne fait jamais.

Piety in regard to the dead: to do everything for what does not exist.

Authors have the power to bore people long after we are dead. –

There were massed about the table, screaming, some thirty people. Sam never remembered any of them, save Endicott Everett Atkins. The rest seemed to him as indistinguishable as separate mosquitoes in a swarm, and rather noisier. But there was nothing noisy about Mr. Endicott Everett Atkins.

And drawers started opening in my brain, drawers I hadn't opened in years, and I was slamming them shut again but bits of memory kept coming, a voice here, a scream there.

As I turned away, I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world. - Watson.