Quotes About Memory

To remember is not always to go back to what used to be.

But I don't remember. I won't remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting.

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.

Memory is the medium of the must-have-been.

Memories are like water.

She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes--as if she's already gone, as if he's practicing sorrow.

That's the beauty of a memory, isn't it? It's the place in our hearts where we can hold onto our loved ones forever.

Anton's daughter from

I once heard that Lord Martin can recall the exact details of every race he's ever been in and all the mistakes the other skippers made, and he doesn't require a chart or tide table when he's at the wheel. He keeps everything stored in his head like a scientific tactician.

Sometimes it seems remarkable how certain moments of our lives stand out from all the others with striking clarity, and are burned into our memories forever.

Grimalkin yawned and licked his whiskers. 'Not dead,' he replied. 'Hardly dead. But she changed her name and appearance so many times, even the oldest fey would hardly remember her. She likes to keep a low profile, you know.' Puck frowned, knitting his bows together. 'Then how is it you remember her?' he demanded, sounding indignant. 'I am a cat,' purred Grimalkin.

I suppose I'll be remembered as dull. Timid. No one ever knew me. People came. They went. I was kind, I think. Not sympathetic, but considerate of others. I always gave up my place in line. I loaned out pencils and paper, or let people take them from me. I never reported a sexual assault.

Out of sight, out of mind. My philosophy of life in a test tube.

You know what I do to forget the past? I drink my own special concoction. I call it Milk of Amnesia.

This time she knew what it was like to hold someone for years in your memory instead of in your arms. She knew how features blurred, voices faded, touches dissolved. So she looked at Robbie and tried to imprint him on her memory, to be able to take him out when she was alone and felt strong enough. When she was safe, and able to think about this moment when she had been perfectly loved and perfectly alone.

Then the sun would sink a little, feathering lightly into the surface of the water, and Grandma and I would climb back in the car and go off and get in a car wreck.

She remembers that she is forgetting. She remembers less and less every day.

Summer was a long hot dream.

She remembers that everything she remembers is not necessarily true.

We didn't know. We didn't want to know. We never asked. All we wanted to do, now that we were back in the world, was forget.