Quotes About Memory

as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive

The dead never go to their own funeral.

We only remember what never really happend

The only thing I can recall is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn't bring himself to reply. Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words.

Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not learned to stifle with words.

There is nothing in the path of life that we don't already know before we start. Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.

I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by words and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the Library seemed to be losing it´s memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

And never forget that we exist so long as someone remembers us

Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind. p. 428

No sé ahora dónde leí una vez que en el fondo nunca hemos sido el de antes, que sólo recordmos lo que nunca sucedió...

A story has no beginning and no end, only points of entry.

That world seemed to have vanished, but for a long time the image I had of my father, which I still preserve today, was that of a thin man wearing an old suit that was too large for him and a secondhand hat he had bought on Calle Condal for seven pesetas, a man who could not afford to buy his son a wretched pen that was useless but seemed to mean everything to him.

A él le hubiere gustado saber que alguien le quería mantener vivo, que le recordaba. El solía decir que existimos mientras alguien nos recuerda.

Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory

Ben invented mathematical theories that even he didn't manage to remember and wrote such bizarre tales of adventure that he ended up destroying them a week after they were finished, embarrassed at the thought that he had penned them.

Benjamín Sentís vivía en pretérito pluscuamperfecto.

She'll live. I've already seen her return from among the dead once before, and those who learn the trick never forget it. I speak from experience. To return from the dead is a bit like riding a bike, or unfastening a girl's bra with a single hand. It's all a question of getting the knack.

few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

I stopped asking my father to take me to see Victor Hugo's pen, and he didn't mention it again. That world seemed to have vanished, but for a long time the image I had of my father, which I still preserve today, was that of a thin man wearing an old suit that was too large for him and a secondhand hat he had bought on Calle Condal for seven pesetas, a man who could not afford to buy his son a wretched pen that was useless but seemed to mean everything to him.

Ya no somos jóvenes — dijo, leyéndome el pensamiento. —¿Cuándo hemos sido jóvenes tú y yo? (We're not young anymore, she said, reading my thought. When were you and I ever young?)

Todo es un cuento, Martín. Lo que creemos, lo que conocemos, lo que recordamos e incluso lo que soñamos. Todo es un cuento, una narración, una secuencia de sucesos y personajes que comunican un contenido emocional. Un acto de fe es un acto de aceptación, aceptación de una historia que se nos cuenta. Solo aceptamos como verdadero aquello que puede ser narrado.

When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.

Nous restons vivants tant que quelqu'un se souvient de nous