Quotes About Memory

If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people — I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images — the emotional quality — of particular moments in childhood. Happily an essential part of myself — my dreaming life — still lives in the light of childhood.

Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot.

Informed of his death, Ritter recalled something Meyers had told him at their first meeting seven years earlier. I am like an old hemlock, he said. My head is still high but the winds of close to a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I have been witness to many wondrous and many tragic things. My eyes perceive the present, but my roots are imbedded [sic] deeply in the grandeur of the past.

I remember going into the office and asking Alma George, our secretary, if she would like a drink. She suddenly burst into tears and I asked her what the matter was. All she said was, The plane has crashed. The horror of those words will haunt me forever. - Jimmy Murphy

If Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye.

Civilizations rose and fell; what caused them to be remembered was

Civilizations rose and fell; what caused them to be remembered was not their contribution to knowledge or culture, not even the size of their empires, but rather how much force they exerted upon the landscape.

He sat gazing into the past.

Dear posterity was of a sentimental, not a realistic, habit.

It was the first kiss he had ever given outside his family circle.

She did not need now to forget what she had seen; and, not needing to forget it—thus are our brains fashioned—she was able to forget it.

People only see the present through the lenses of their personal pasts.

People only see the present through the lenses of their personal pasts." Her lips soured. "Maybe that's my problem too.

the best way to honor Chairman Mao's memory was to see his face on as many hundred yuan notes as possible.

The ants Geiser recently observed under a dripping fir tree are not concerned with what anyone might know about them; nor were the dinosaurs, which died out before a human being set eyes on them. All the papers, whether on the wall or on the carpet, can go. Who cares about the Holocene? Nature needs no names. Geiser knows that. The rocks do not need his memory.

Sehen Sie«, sagte er und zuckte die Achseln, »wir haben so Erinnerungen, wir Menschen. Sie halten uns immer wieder auf; all die Jahre denkt man an irgendeinen Morgen, einen Freitag, einen Morgen mit Oliven … Sie müssen das verstehen.«

Jemand sagte mir, daß Dinge, die wir für Erinnerung halten, Gegenwart sind. Es überzeugt. Dann wieder verwirrt es. Denn es nimmt den Dingen, die uns begegnen, schlechterdings die Zeit, und oft weiß ich nicht mehr, wo in meinem Leben ich mich eigentlich befinde. Das ist sehr abenteuerlich. Ich treffe Leute, die gar nicht mehr sind, und rede mit ihnen.

What I heard was the usual story: marriage, a child (which I didn't quite catch, obviously, otherwise I shouldn't have asked again later on), then the war, a prison camp, return to Düsseldorf and so on; it shook me to think how time passes, how we grow older.

My work?" she said. "You can see for yourself, patching up fragments. That is supposed to have been a vase. From Crete. I stick the past together.

Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia

No wonder Chelsea's memory had become her greatest weapon, a sword she wielded, wounding others to protect herself. For decades she had waged this war, but at what cost? Now she stood alone on the battlefield, bleeding and bruised. There were no victors in this war, and Chelsea counted herself among the casualties.

Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is.

Don't settle for one-night stands in the arms of a stranger. Be obsessed with your wedding date. Guard against forgetfulness. Be intolerant of memory lapses. Write yourself notes. Memorize verses. Do whatever you need to do to remember. " Aim at what is in heaven. Think only about the things in heaven" (Colossians 3:1–2).You are engaged to royalty, and your Prince is coming to take you home.

In America my mother has eyes as strong as boulders, never once skittering off a face, but she has not learned to place decorations and phonograph needles, nor has she stopped seeing land on the other side of the oceans. Now her eyes include the relatives in China, as they once included my father smiling and smiling in his many western outfits, a different one for each photograph that he sent from America. (1983: 59)