Quotes About Memory

Books cannot be killed by fire," he declared. "People die, but books never die.

On April 29, 1986, the day the library burned

Memory believes before knowing remembers. —William Faulkner, Light in August

Los Angeles seemed to always be moving toward the eternal future; it was a city that shed memories before they had a chance to stick.

Taking books away from a culture is to take away its shared memory.

I found myself wondering whether a shared memory can exist if one of the people sharing it no longer remembers it.

Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual's consciousness is a collection of memories we've cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share, one that burns down and disappears when we die.

Why would an old couple in San Francisco give to the Los Angeles Library to save the books?" one note read. "Well, [my] father collapsed and died in the LA Public Library on July 17, 1952. Heart Attack or stroke. I never found out which. Good luck with your campaign.

We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is a sheer act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

This building was full of what it was missing. It was if the people who passed thorough had left a small indent in the air.

Taking books away from a culture is to take away its shared memory. It's like taking away the ability to remember your dreams. Destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something wose than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.

He tugged at his hair more, and then added, "He knew Burt Reynolds and what's-her-name that he married. Debra, what's that name?" "Loni Anderson, Daddy," Debra said. She turned to me. "Harry knew them really well. He knew everything about them. He told me that Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson would get divorced way before anyone else knew.

idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience

The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is

We are all whispering into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is a sheer act of defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn't understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual's consciousness is a collection of memories we've cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share, one that burns down and disappears when we die.

If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?

I convinced myself that committing them to a page meant the memory was saved, somehow, from the corrosive effect of time.

This was a shrine to being forgotten; to memories sprinkled like salt; ideas vaporized as if they had never been formed; stories evaporated as if they had no substance and no weight keeping them bound to the earth and to each of us, and most of all, to the yet - unfolded future.

In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn't understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual's consciousness is a collection of memories we've cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.

Destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.

Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger?

The reading of the book was a journey. There was no need for souvenirs.