Quotes About Memory

How close the past looms, circling the present like a dead moon, lifting slow repetitious tides on the living planet.

there is no greater misery than to remember, with bitter regret, a day when you were happy 

a kaleidoscopic, fragmented rush of images that exploded out of memory. They careened into her like an avalanche and swept her away

Il passato era solo un ricordo, un vecchio promemoria di ciò che era andato perduto. Il futuro una vaga promessa-sogni e spire di fumo. Non gli interessavano.

He had never come back to anything. The past was never his concern.

Stoon savored the memory. It gave him an undeniable satisfaction. There were many others like it, but none that provided such a clear sense of fulfillment. Drust Chazhul had been a monster, bereft of any sense of moral obligation or purpose in life. He had only wanted to achieve power and then hang on to it. Such men were plentiful and always replaceable. Such men needed purging, and when the chance came to remove one, it was an opportunity to be exploited.

We are the sum of our life's experiences, and our bodies reveal much of what that experience has been.

Consider that women are better than men at remembering the location of objects. Thousands of men and women all over the world have taken a test of object memory, and women perform better, on average.

Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.

The trick is to keep cutting the present off from the past. In this way, you can try to deny the fact that the past is what we are made of, and that there would be no present without it. One of the several problems with this way of living is that it is not clear how what is reborn every moment can be said to be you. Personal identity involves a degree of continuity.

It's true that this is not a book you stick on a shelf. This is a story you will instead always carry in your heart.

But who I was, who you loved, no longer exists. I have passed on. In your world, only my memory can exist. Your loyalty to me because of that memory is a part of life, but it can become disloyalty to yourself if you hold it so closely that it crowds out the rest of life.

Desperately, his mind raced as he cried, trying to make time go backward, to do it again differently, to ignore the voices, to keep hold of her hand, to save her.

Don't shed tears over those already in the ground, until after you have brought vengeance to those who put them there. There will be time enough, then.

Everything was white around the childlike beauty of her face. "I'm so sorry, Denna," he whispered. "You will remember me?" "I will have nightmares the rest of my life." Her smile widened. "I'm glad." She seemed genuinely proud.

I've got tons of irreplaceable information inside the soul of this computer.

He encouraged me to take one more deep puff and hold it in, so I did, and the smoke traveled down on top of my esophagus and then did a U-turn up into where my brain was supposed to be. At first it felt like fireworks, and then I began to feel like I was floating down a stream. I liked it. And I took another puff and studied my ass off. The next morning, however, I would fail my very first Spanish exam, because I would not remember how to conjugate anything except Abraham.

Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...

Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.

The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you've got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You've got to stop. You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.

No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence.

no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.

And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone.