Quotes About Memory

The first meeting I really remember with the good doctor was when I was starting to be able to speak English again and making a brave attempt to regain some of my dignity. Trying to be very sane, I went up to him and asked if he was my doctor. He said he didn't think so. You're Dr. Dale, aren't you? Why, Mark, of course. I didn't recognize you with clothes on. He had a talent for saying just the right thing.

The Doc. Virginia and Simon had told me that Dr. Dale was my doctor. I have a fuzzy recollection of walking up to some doctor-looking person and being totally absorbed by his gold tie clip. I suspected it was the button to end the world so I didn't touch it. I'm pretty sure it was Dr. Dale. I don't know who else would be so tasteless as to walk around a mental hospital wearing the button to end the world.

the most ancient parts of the brain make no distinction between the external threat of the tiger and internal "threats" such as worries about the future or memories from the past.

One forgets that one is one. I must try to remember this.

Darkness is impossible to remember. Consequently cavers desire to return to those unseen depths where they have just been. It is an addiction. No one is ever satisfied. Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does.

i miss u i love you there's no second ive lived you can't call your own

I miss you. I love you. There's no second I've lived you can't call your own.

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

Ever see yourself doing something in the past and no matter how many times you remember it you still want to scream stop, somehow redirect the action, reorder the present?

How do we remember this emptiness so in fullness we won't forget?

How do we remember this emptiness so in fullness we won't forget?' Asked once, when emptiness was the worst. Why ever [would] he want to remember that?

Oh Shnorhk, how beautifully you speak Armenian, the third thing I miss most about you. The second thing I miss most about you: how beautifully you play. Shnorhk not say anything. What trying to say only take away. Shnorhk just scald throat with more tea and eat cake after cake. Grateful still, in the end, that Mnatsagan, always kind, is kind enough not to say the first thing he miss so much.

And so now, in the shadow of unspoken events, I watch Zampanò's courtyard darken. Everything whimsical has left. I try to study the light-going carefully. From my room. In the glass of memory. In the moonstream of my imagination. The weeds, the windows, every bench. But the old man is not there, and the cats are all gone. Something else has taken their place. Something I am unable to see. Waiting. I'm afraid. It is hungry. It is immortal. Worse, it knows nothing of whim.

i miss the man i thought i was before i met her the man who would have saved her who would have done something who would have been tom maybe hes the one im looking for or maybe im looking for all of them i miss u i love u there's no second ive lived you can't call your own -Navy

Lude whispered when he told me things, things I couldn't give a damn about back then but now, now, well my nights would be a great deal shorter if I didn't have to remember them.

I lost sight of those dreams.

All those signs I just now finished telling you about quickly vanished in the light of subsequent days or had never been there to begin with, existing only in retrospect.

Perhaps when I'm finished I'll remember what I'd hoped to say in the first place.

In fact all I had to hold onto at that moment . . . was her face, that wry smile, Natasha's, seen but unknown, found in a restaurant, lost on a street corner . . .

a story I've already lived and really don't need to retell here.

with very little to remind them of themselves or their past or even their tomorrows . . .

It looks like its impossible to leave a lasting trace here.

All I could hold but in the end not save. Of course I lost everything. I lost her number, I lost her, and then in a fugue of erasure, I lost the memory of her, so that by the time she called she was gone along with the kisses and the promise and all that hope.

Yes, often, I am reminded of her, and in one of my vast array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt- an immense leap of an attempt- to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it. Here it is. One of a handful. The Book Thief. If you feel like it, come with me. I will tell you a story. I'll show you something.