Quotes About Memory

Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

I see now that the unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier—dead, melted wax—demands a response among the living…a response no one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous—as if cursed—while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?

Two sets of memory warred in the woman, and the war was getting worse.

His old name was on the toll of the fallen, after all, and beside it was Blackdog Wood, 1159 Burn's Sleep.

Friend, I have remembered something.

There were secrets in music and poetry. Secrets few knew and even fewer understood. Their power often stole into a listener subtle as the memory of scent on a drawn breath, less than a whisper, yet capable of transforming the one so gifted, an instinctual ecstasy that made troubles vanish, that made all manner of grandeur possible - indeed, within reach.

Honourable Murillo is dead

The dead speak in silences and so never leave us in peace.

The memories of his people were, Karsa Orlong now knew, twisted things. Surrendered to oblivion when unpleasant, burgeoning to a raging fire of glory when heroic. Defeat had been spun into victory in the weaving of every tale.

Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?

Mistress to these footprints Lover to the wake of where He has just passed, for the path he wanders is between us all. The sweet taste of loss feeds every mountain stream, Failing ice down to seas warm as blood threading thin our dreams. For where he leads her has lost its bones, And the trail he walks is flesh without life and the sea remembers nothing.

Can you be nostalgic for the instant just past? Oh yes, and it's a bittersweet taste.

No one lets dead poets lie in peace. We are like old meat on a crowded dinner table.

We were never what people could be. We were only what we were. Remember us

I have lived centuries, yet what do I know of my own past? Where are my memories? How can I judge my own life without such knowledge?' 'Some would consider your curse a gift,' Mappo said, a flicker of sadness passing across his features.

Cuttle smiled, and then he whispered to them in his mind, You should have seen our last stands. They were something. They were something. Darkness, and then brightness – brightness like a summer day without end. He went there, without a single look back.

Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous—as if cursed—while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold? Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown.

There is, on rare occasions, true joy, but each time that precious, startling moment then dwindles, and in each face you see a hint of sorrow—as if what was just found will now be for ever remembered as a thing lost. Can you be nostalgic for the instant just past? Oh yes, and it's a bittersweet taste.

All breaks in the narrative of living had more to do with the limits of what could be sustained at any one time, the reach of temporary exhaustion. Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

The Fenn had fallen far from their past glories, yet they remembered enough to know their old name. You cannot even make that claim. Your kind walked this Earth when the T'lan Imass were still flesh. From your blood came the Barghast and the Trell. You are Thelomen Toblakai.

You forget, I once watched you dance...

Badalle thought that Saddic's book should hold vast numbers of blank pages, to mark such silences and all they contained. The truths and the lies, the needs and the wants. The nows and the thens, the theres and the heres. If she saw such pages, and could crisp back each one, one after another, she would nod, remembering how it was. How it was.

good men, the ones you lost.

The named soldier – dead, melted wax – demands a response among the living . . . a response no-one can make. Names are no comfort, they're a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous – as if cursed – while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold?