Quotes About Memory

There is always a romance that we leave behind in London, and always London enlocks that flower for us, and keeps it fresh, so that when we come back we have our romance again.

After all, the past is such a little thing, one can drown it in a drop. And the future is so big.

I was reminded of the Winchester Mystery House, which I'd seen as a child on a trip with my parents. From above, there was the same sort of random conglomeration—peaked roofs connected to flat roofs, shakes and shingles, tarpaper and skylights—and I realized that Frank had constructed his house from the town, connecting the buildings until they made one enormous edifice. "Jesus," I breathed.

We may be done with the past but the past is not done with us. Show more Show less

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event -- either seen, remembered or imagined. A 'finished' work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

Sooner or later we all quote our mothers.

I don't know why we sleep or wake or why one dreams a fast bombastic image and the other memory's faintest trace which anyway haunts the day, if you look hard through the flawed window glass you can begin to see the lightest rain or snow but it's not there, now I can see it on the books and on the walls, it's in my eyes, I shouldn't even mention it, yet do you see it.

She remembered brighter days, but never spoke of them. It was one of the Great Mistakes, thinking of brightness as a quality of the past.

They tell me the letters I write to you and leave here at this memorial are waking others up to the fact that there is still much pain left, after all these years, from the Vietnam War. But this I know. I would rather to have had you for 21 years, and all the pain that goes with losing you, than never to have had you at all.

Whenever Leslie wanted to talk about something else: basketball practice drills, vacationing in the Bahamas, Mari Carmen rerouted Leslie back to sex, the ultimate destination being March 1, 1989. To keep Mari as a friend, Leslie had to generate more and more sexual juice. When Leslie ran out of sexual anecedotes (truth or fable was anybody's guess), Mari would yawn audibly and end the conversation.

There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction. What does that tell you about the nature of life, and does one really want to know?

Weinig mensen kunnen het nalaten zichzelf hoog te achten met betrekking tot de kennis die zij zich eens hebben verworven, zelfs als zijn deze zijn kwijtgeraakt. En als zij niet erg bescheiden en discreet zijn, zullen de onverteerde flarden die zulke mensen zich gewoonlijk van het Latijn herinneren, hen bijna altijd op een of ander moment belachelijk maken voor degenen die er wel goed van op de hoogte zijn.

Thoughts, pictures of him would come to me just a second after waking, shocking me from the forgetfulness of sleep, striking blows that were almost physical. And even in sleep I was not completely free. So often sleep brought dreams of him.

life was different before 9/11, Waris said, as they left the town behind and walked along a busy main road passing big old houses made of thick slabs of grey stone; she was too young to remember the 'before era', when her mother said people looked at hijabbed women with surprise, curiosity or pity

she runs for her life because to slip up is to begin descending the slippery slope to giving in to failure, to inertia, to feeling sorry for herself about that moment in her life which still creeps to the front of her memory when she least expects it

i love Britain, too, Ams, although less so every time I return, it's become a living memory for me, Britain feels in the past, even when I'm in its present.

I think of the memory as being rather like a dam," he said, after a pause for thought. "It irrigates and gives life to our whole spirit. But, like a dam, it needs overflow channels if it's not to burst its banks. Because if it ever does overflow or burst, its waters will destroy everything in its path.

Al'inizio lo feci malvolentieri, lo facevo unicamente per dar retta allo Scocciatore, sperando unicamente che la smettesse di tormentarmi. Ma poi ci presi gusto e mi ci dedicai anima e corpo. Avevo scoperto il piacere di scrivere e di ricordare, capivo che in questo modo mi sarei finalmente liberata dal peso del passato e che la penna, come un aratro, avrebbe smosso il terreno della memoria e gli avrebbe dato ordine.

Pero lo peor, pese a todo, no es que haya muchas inexactitudes y mentiras, pues eso quizá sea una característica de todas las memorias. Lo peor es que recordar y poner en el papel lo recordado no trae alivio alguno. En vez de disminuir, las preguntas se multiplican, y la angustia se hace más honda.

A remembrance can mean nothing to the one remembered; it can only remind the ones left behind how little they did while you were still alive.

It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily..

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.