Quotes About Memory

For survivors of prolonged, repeated trauma, it is not practical to approach each memory as a separate entity. There are simply too many incidents, and often similar memories have blurred together. Usually, however, a few distinct and particularly meaningful incidents stand out. Reconstruction of the trauma narrative is often based heavily upon these paradigmatic incidents, with the understanding that one episode stands for many.

La respuesta habitual a las atrocidades es borrarlas de la conciencia. Ciertas violaciones de! orden social son demasiado terribles como para pronunciarlas en voz alta: ese es el significado de la palabra impronunciable.

Some people feel love in their hearts, Julie. Some of us feel it all way into our souls. We're the ones who can't forget.

What would you have me do, Odo? We're all terminal cases. Even our cultures. Even our worlds. A hundred years for an individual and he's gone, only a memory for a hundred more, at most. Perhaps longer if he's someone to whom they build statues. But after a thousand years, whom do we really remember?

The main work of haunting is done by the living

It is the image in the mind that binds us to our lost treasures, but it is the loss that shapes the image. —Colette

In your mind's eye, create a photograph of your family posed together. Notice who's leaning into whom, who's touching, where hands are placed and eyes are focused. Look into the faces; write what you see. Write what happens right after the photo is snapped.

Amy Tan said, "In the telling of stories something happens, your whole perception and memory of things begins to change and you can let go of what you have just told—you give it away." In letting go, we heal.

The elements of architecture are not visual units or gestalt; they are encounters, confrontations that interact with memory.

The body knows and remembers. Architectural meaning derives from archaic responses and reactions remembered by the body and the senses.

Beden salt bir fiziksel varl?k de?ildir; bellekle ve dü?le, geçmi?le ve gelecekle zenginle?ir.

The silences of history must be made to speak [Il faut faire parler les silences de l'histoire].

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.

We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?

Ich sehe keinen Sinn darin, der eigenen Vergangenheit hinterherzuräumen. Anwachsende Unordnung ist ein Maß für das Vergehen von Zeit.

Und Erinnerungen sind einfach wie Fernsehen.

Unterschwellig wächst die Angst, irgendwann zu verstehen und nie wieder vergessen zu können, nicht mehr in der Lage zu sein, ins eigene Leben zurückzukehren.

Una buona memoria non smette mai di verbalizzare l'ingiustizia. Annulla le possibilità di stupirsi e insegna a tacere.

Everything speaks of what it has been: the leg bone of a wading bird holds the image of that bird standing on the mud of a shoreline, poised on its own mirror reflection.

You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,' [Chef Bugnard] said. 'Even after you eat it, it stays with you - always.

Um, I forgot what that means, but madlob!

the way he used to when our love was a living creature, breathing in the room with us.

As I ached for this lost part of myself, my missing finger became a synecdoche for all lost things in my life—women and mothers, youth and full-scalp coverage, soberness, and the bliss of solid sleep. Most of all, I ached for the future as a shimmering, distant thing.

That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fills in the gaps for you.