Quotes About Memory

I remember a blue eye, A briefcase of tangerines.

Maybe forgetfullness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.

I am a part of all that I have met." To you, whether or not you know, having wandered into the tissue of my life, and out again, you have left a momentary part of you which I will work into something. There is nothing but that it will suffer a sea change into something rich and strange. Through me transmuted.

Is that life after death — mind living on paper and flesh living in offspring?

In the heart of the forest, your image follows me

Dla cz?owieka siedz?cego pod szklanym kloszem, znieczulonego na wszystko, zatrzymanego w rozwoju jak embrion w spirytusie, ca?e ?ycie jest jednym wielkim, z?ym snem. Z?y sen! Pami?tam ka?d? jego chwil?.

We'll take up where we left off, Esther', she had said, with her sweet martyr's smile. 'We'll act as if all this were a bad dream.' A bad dream. To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream. A bad dream. I remembered everything. ... Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.

Yo lo recordaba todo. (...) Quizá el olvido, como una bondadosa nieve, los entumeciera y los cubriera. Pero eran parte de mí. Eran m paisaje.

Words, dimly familiar but twisted all awry, like faces in a funhouse mirror, fled past, leaving no impression on the glassy surface of my brain.

I know I'll always think of you with something like hurt and nostalgia— — from a letter to Ann Davdiow-Goodman, written 1951

Tudo o que eu já lera sobre gente maluca havia se fixado no meu cérebro, enquanto o resto evaporou.

Die Menschen bestanden in erster Linie aus Staub, und ich verstand nicht, warum es besser sein sollte, all diesen Staub zu verarzten, als Gedichte zu schreiben, an die sich die Leute erinnerten und die sie sich aufsagten, wenn sie unglücklich oder krank waren oder nicht schlafen konnten.

I thought it would be the way I'd feel if I ever visited Europe. I'd come home, and if I looked closely into the mirror I'd be able to make out a little white Alp at the back of my eye.

Mrs. Guinea answered my letter and invited me to lunch at her home. That was where I saw my first fingerbowl. The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms. Mrs. Guinea never said anything, and it was only much later, when I told a debutante I knew at college about the dinner, that I learned what I had done.

While he kissed me I kept my eyes open and tried to memorize the spacing of the house lights so I would never forget them.

A bad dream. To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. A bad dream. I remembered everything.

It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter anymore. And yet I cannot let it go. I cannot let it go.

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.

People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doc- toring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn't sleep.

Van egy nap, amelyet sosem fogsz elfelejteni, bármennyire próbálod is. Mindig eszedbe jut, amikor eljön a nyár, s már eléggé meleg az idÅ' az evezéshez. Amikor itt az elsÅ' kéklÅ' júniusi nap, kél az emlék, elevenen, kristálytisztán, mintha könnyeken át látnád… (Egy júniusi nap)

?udia sú totiž vytvorení zvä?ša z prachu a mne neÅ¡lo do hlavy, pre?o by lie?enie vÅ¡etkého toho prachu malo byÃ…Â¥ lepÅ¡ie ako písanie básní, ktoré si tí ?udia zapamätajú a v duchu si ich opakujú, ke? sú neÅ¡Å¥astní alebo chorí, alebo nemôžu spaÃ…Â¥.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream... I remembered everything... Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.

I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I'm still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh.