Quotes About Memory

We found that one of the biggest differences between memory athletes and the rest of us is in a cognitive ability that's not a direct measure of memory at all but of attention," explained Roediger in a New York Times blog post (emphasis mine). The ability in question is called "attentional control," and it measures the subjects' ability to maintain their focus on essential information.

Humans have maintained rich and fulfilling social lives for our entire history without needing the ability to send a few bits of information each month to people we knew briefly during high school.

Maybe memory was just a wicked curse, and the kind of mind what could wipe out painful recollections a blessing. Maybe .....

Someone spoke of your death, Heraclitus. It brought meTears, and I remembered how often togetherWe ran the sun down with talk… somewhereYou've long been dust, my Halicarnassian friend.But your Nightingales live on. Though the Death-worldClaws at everything, it will not touch them.

News of your death. Tears, and the memory of all the times we talked the sun down the sky. You, Herakleitos of Halikarnassos, once my friend, now vacant dust, whose poems are nightingales beyond the clutch of the unseen god.

Don't forget that déjà vu is the word that when you look it up the dictionary says, "You've looked this up before, haven't you?

A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.

It live on in all who live and remember, teaching them how to discover such a love for themselves.

But the scent of my father's hate could not be washed entirely away. It clung to my skin, a faint rotten spell.

What happend to her? To Miranda?' Ulysses shrugged. 'What happens to most children. She got sick, and never got better.' 'And your wife?' 'The same.' 'But you said you were married,' said Will, glancing down at Ulysses's ring, smooth and lustrous in the half-light. 'I'll always be married. But it'll be the next world when I see her again.

Why didn't they go back to India?" "Oh, you know how it is. Once you are outside a place you can never go back. Not really.

Faye guessed she was seeing images in her mind. The sort of images you had to live with for the rest of your life, like war wounds, but in your heart rather than on your skin.

there was something indefinably tired and worn-out about Birgit, like a photograph whose edges were missing their crispness.

esvástica se recortaba aún visible sobre el fondo rojo y

His love for her had never been stronger. He caressed her arm, as if he were caressing the soul that had now left her body. He didn't look back when he left. It was not 'good-bye', it was 'until we meet again'.

Si quitásemos a los toros la ciencia cierta de acabar sus nobles, sus violentos cuatro años con tres palmos de acero cruzándoles las entrañas, los toros, como flores segadas, no serían sino el bello recuerdo de una estampa de un cimbrearse al viento

La vida no es sólo el corazón que late. Es también el pensamiento flotando sobre el corazón que ha dejado de latir.

Where was she now? in a middle-aged marriage? did she live in this city still? He had a sudden urge to see her, as if he might retrieve by looking at her the ferocious sensation of that kiss, that moment –

The past is a sadly inadequate word for what we've been through

One of my earliest memories is of my father carrying me in one arm with a picket sign in the other.

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.

Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive.

fond," one catty countess recalled, "with diamonds scattered