Quotes About Memory

Nabokov complained he was afflicted with total recall, an affliction of which he could be miraculously cured by the presence of a biographer.

every part contained a memory of the other parts it was directly attached to.

Something peculiar is happening to my head. I remember that my father was Barnaby, but I had another named Balaton. Unless that's a lake in Albania.

The most recent of the iamides, heavily advertised - authentium. Creates synthetic recollections of things that never happened. A few grams of dantine, for instance, and a man goes around with a deep conviction that he has written The Divine Comedy. Why anyone would want that is another matter and quite beyond me.

But I would prefer not to dwell any longer on these unpleasant memories; a man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.

One female magnifican, who hardly ever dropped in on us, for some unknown reason took a shine to me and once, after downing Lord knows how many mugs of mineral oil, whispered: "Thou art cute. Wilt have me? Let us hyen to my hous, our-selven ther for to up-hooken . . ." I pretended that a sudden cathode discharge had made it impossible for me to hear her words.

It could simply have taken a procedure that didn't consist of words. As a fixed memory trace it's a protein structure. Like the head of a spermatozoon, or an ovum. After all, in the brain there aren't any words, feelings, the recollection of a person is an image written in the language of nucleic acids on megamolecular asynchronous crystals.

Lo que fue y pasó, no existe y es como si jamás hubiera existido, al igual que un pastel que te comiste ayer ya no te sirve para nada. Por eso, si uno logra creer en ello, uno podría inventarse un pasado que no tuvo y sería como si lo hubiera vivido de verdad».

according to Lem's Law, 'No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets' -- owing to general lack of time, the oversupply of books, and the perfection of advertising.

Il passato, come lei sa, è come certi torturati. Duro a morire.

Tutti abbiamo il nostro momento d'oro. E dopo, è bello ricordarlo. Se fosse sempre il nostro momento d'oro non ce ne accorgeremmo neanche». «Quand'è stato il tuo momento d'oro?» mi chiede Mara. Ci penso un po' su e poi rispondo: «Una volta ho vinto un pesce rosso al Luna Park». Segue un rispettoso silenzio.

Dove sono finiti gli yes dogs? e gli Hula-hoop? E le tartarughe Ninja? E la carta moschicida? E la democrazia?

Un dolore che non sentiva da anni lo ferì, una fitta allo stomaco, un'immagine di lei nella grotta, il ricordo del primo sguardo, l'odore dei suoi capelli. Tutto divenne prezioso e lontano, come in una fotografia.

Relationship Time to Aloneness. Having a companion fixes you in time and that of the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present.

Do not cry for me, Jane--but carry me always in your heart, as one who loved you for that courage to be yourself, and not what convention would have you be. Your Rogue

Selective memory is not a bad thing when it leads children to forget arguments in the back seat of the car and to look forward to their next vacation. But it's a serious problem when it leads grown-ups to try to re-create a past that either never existed at all or whose seemingly attractive features were inextricably linked to injustices and restrictions on liberty that few Americans would tolerate today.

The individual stories of saltwater slavery form the antithesis of historical narrative, for they feature not an evolving plot of change over time, but rather a tale of endless repetition that allows no temporal progression. Every protagonist was a pioneer, blazing a trail on the same ground traveled by predecessors in saltwater slavery, but without the benefit of historical memory. It is a narrative in which time seems to stand still.

Inside a book, she captures all that's lost. She journals so her words won't fly away.

But in dying so suddenly her mother had become a riddle at the gate instead of the road you walked to get there.

Five million years was plenty of time to forget, as you evolved or devolved or whatever the hell.

Did your parents die of the flu?' 'Yeah, I don't really know how long ago that was now though. It's hard to keep counting the days.' 'You're right about that,' Nick agreed. 'But it's been about two months since the pandemic.' 'Two

there is this one photograph... that is just beautiful. it would be impossible to describe how beautiful it is, but i'll try. if you listen to the song "asleep," and you think about those pretty weather days that make you remember things, and you think about the prettiest eyes you've known, and you cry and the person holds you back, then i think you will see the photograph.

Despite everything my mom and doctor and dad have said to me about blame, I can't stop thinking what I know. And I know that my aunt Helen would still be alive today if she just bought me one present like everybody else. She would be alive if I were born on a day that didn't snow.

Adults are bad at remembering how powerful they can be because somewhere along the line, they were shamed for their imagination.