Quotes About Memory

Liesel was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform.

So many humans. So many colors. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts. And then. There is death.

Papa would say a word and the girl would have to spell it aloud and then paint it on the wall, as long as she got it right. After a month, the wall was recoated. A fresh cement page.

It was like she held a string and pulled on it just slightly to open me up. She got in, put a piece of herself inside me, and left again. In there, somewhere, I still feel it.

Sí, la recuerdo menudo y conservo su historia en uno de mis múltiples bolsillos para contarla una y otra vez. Es una más de la pequeña legión que llevo conmigo, cada una de ellas extraordinarias a su modo. Todas son un intento, un extraordinario intento de demostrarme que vosotros, y la existencia humana, valéis la pena.

I am haunted by humans

As the density subsided, the rollcall of names limped through the ruptured streets, sometimes ending with an ash-filled embrace, or a knelt-down howl of grief. They accumulated, hour by hour, like sweet and sour dreams waiting to happen. The dangers merged into one. Powder and smoke and the gusty flames. The damaged people. Like the rest of the men in the unit, Hans would need to perfect the art of forgetting.

Finally, in October 1945, a man with swampy eyes, feathers of hair, and a clean-shaven face walked into the shop. He approached the counter. "Is there someone here by the name of Liesel Meminger?" "Yes, she's in the back," said Alex. He was hopeful, but he wanted to be sure. "May I ask who is calling on her?" Liesel came out. They hugged and cried and fell to the floor.

THE FILES OF RECOLLECTION* * * Oh, yes, I definitely remember him The sky was murky and deep like quicksand. There was a young man parceled up in barbed wire, like a giant crown of thorns. I untangled him and carried him out. High above the earth, we sank together, to our knees. It was just another day, 1918.

So many colors. They keep triggering inside me. They harstinker my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.

In that one stolen second, I considered the Glebe girl. She entered my mind like a burglar, them vanished again, taking nothing. It was like the humiliation of the past had been dragged instantly from my back and left somewhere on the ground.

Earlier, I'd held her papa in one arm and her mama in the other. Each soul was so soft.

For a good ten minutes or so we stand there with the flashlight burning the grave with light. The whole time, I'm trying to guess where and exactly how he died and, more to the point, realizing that poor old Milla's been without him for sixty-years. I can tell. No other man has entered her life. Not the way her Jimmy did. She's been waiting sixty years for Jimmy to come back. And now he has.

For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

Quiero palabras en mi entierro. Aunque imagino que eso significa que necesitas vida en tu vida.

La memoria me dice que en la parte de atrás [...] había muchos anhelos.

It was with great sadness that she realised that her brother would be six forever, but when she held that thought, she also made an effort to smile.

And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow.

Like the rest of the men in the unit, Hans would need to perfect the art of forgetting.

Sometimes she would whisper the word Mama and see her mother's face a hundred times in a single afternoon.

Sitting in the water, she imagined the smell of it, mapped out on her papa's clothes. More than anything, it was the smell of friendship, and she could find it on herself, too. Liesel loved that smell. She would sniff her arm and smile as the water cooled around her.

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. H tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, her lips were fleshy, and she leaned in once more, this time losing control and misjudging it. Their teeth collided on the demolished world of Himmel Street.

She saw it all so clearly. Her starving mother, her missing father. Kommunisten. Her dead brother.

They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.