Quotes About Memory

Grief moves us like love. Grief is love, I suppose. Love as a backwards glance.

One of the earliest memories I have of my father is of him urinating... What must it be like, I wondered, to unleash so much power through so flimsy an attachment?

I know that if I were a spirit, the last place you'd find me haunting would be my grave, watching my body rot.

He shakes his head and grimaces. "I need to get my own place, like, yesterday." "So why don't you?" He taps his head. "Brain injury. There are things I can't do." "Like what?" "Like remembering what the fuck it is I can't do." He opens the passenger door and throws himself down in the seat.

Okay. Here's what I've learned. You can live your life being nice to everyone, you can be a loving son, a moderately decent student, never do hard drugs or impregnate anyone's daughter, be an all-around good guy and live in harmony with all of God's creatures. But crash one stolen Mercedes in front of the police station when you're fifteen years old and they'll never let you forget it.

Childhood feels so permanent

that's how she stays with you forever, by making sure you're okay after she's gone. It's like emotional life insurance.

I seem to recall having had edgier taste in music, but I suppose that's just one more adjustment I'll have to make to my compromised memories.

Closure is bullshit. In the absence of some kind of biological memory wipe, there is no such thing. Personal loss is always with us. We learn to live with it; we don't make it go away.

Loving her was heaven that turned to hell when she died.

But when you make love, the dead stay close, fill the bed, lie along the bodies in tiers, sandwiching all their lives with yours.

If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That's the purpose of memory. It's not "to remember the past." It's to stop the same damn thing from happening over and over.

You remember the past not so that it is "accurately recorded," to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Memory is not a description of the objective past. Memory is a tool. Memory is the past's guide to the future. If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That's the purpose of memory. It's not "to remember the past." It's to stop the same damn thing from happening over and over.

Perhaps Man is something that should never have been. Perhaps the world should even be cleansed of all human presence, so that Being and consciousness could return to the innocent brutality of the animal. I believe that the person who claims never to have wished for such a thing has neither consulted his memory nor confronted his darkest fantasies.

Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out what someone genuinely means when they are talking. This is because often they are articulating their ideas for the first time. They can't do it without wandering down blind alleys or making contradictory or even nonsensical claims. This is partly because talking (and thinking) is often more about forgetting than about remembering

This is what happened. This is why. This is what I have to do to avoid such things from now on": That's a successful memory. That's the purpose of memory. You remember the past not so that it is "accurately recorded," to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Memory is not a description of the objective past. Memory is a tool. Memory is the past's guide to the future.

The past is not necessarily what it was, even though it has already been.

La memoria no es una descripción del pasado objetivo, sino una herramienta. La memoria es la guía del pasado para el futuro.

When you remember something, you simplify it, while retaining most of what is important. Thus, your memory can serve as a filter, removing what is useless and preserving and organizing what is vital. [Reconstructing and writing down your argument from memory] is distilling to its essence.

They can't do it without wandering down blind alleys or making contradictory or even nonsensical claims. This is partly because talking (and thinking) is often more about forgetting than about remembering.

Memory is not a description of the objective past. Memory is a tool. Memory is the past's guide to the future. If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That's the purpose of memory. It's not "to remember the past". It's to stop the same damn thing form happening over and over.

The authority who remembers his or her sojourn as voluntary beginner, by contrast, can retain their identification with the newcomer and the promise of potential, and use that memory as the source of personal information necessary to constrain the hunger for power.