Quotes About Memory

During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins.

My presence scared them. I reminded them of the one thing in the world we want most to forget.

A cemetery is a history of people -a perpetual record of yesterday and sanctuary of peace and quiet today. A cemetery exists because crcrv life is worth loving and rc nrcnrbcrirli-alm111s. - WILLIAM GLADSTONE, PRIME MINISTER OF ENGLAND, 1890

Ruthie handed me a leather-bound notebook and said she wanted me to fill it with everything I could remember.

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed.

Few of us can hold on to our real selves long enough to discover the momentous truths about ourselves and this whirling earth to which we cling. This is especially true of men [and women] in war. The great god Mars tries to blind us when we enter his realm, and when we leave he gives us a generous cup of the waters of Lethe to drink. -- J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections of Men in Battle

Until there is a common vocabulary and a shared historical memory, there is no peace in any society, only an absence of war... The search for a common narrative must, at times, be forced upon a society. Few societies seem able to do this willingly.

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as lie. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the lie that led to it.

Until there is a common vocabulary and a shared historical memory there is no peace in any society, only an absence of war. The fighting may have stopped in Bosnia or Cyprus but this does not mean the war is over. The search for a common narrative must, at times, be forced upon a society. Few societies seem able to do this willingly.

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as a life. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the life that led to it.

We said we'd fly the flag without him and carry on. I didn't give him a kiss because I still hadn't accepted what was happening. I was hoping that some miracle was going to happen. Of course, it didn't. I wish I had kissed him now.

For my first role, I'm going to remember it forever as this incredible, positive experience, and just a miracle. The stars aligned, and it was perfect.

Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.

No history can be a faithful mirror. If it were, it would be as long and as dull as life itself. It must be a selection, and, being a selection, must inevitably be biased.

One of my earliest memories was when I was three, going to this full-length mirror in my parents' bathroom and saying into the mirror, 'You are going to be an actress.'

I've always thought there was something very marvelous and magical about mirrors, and that they are connected to memory as well.

You can miss someone every day and still be glad you don't have to see them.

I once missed an appointment because I left my house, I locked the door. And then I thought, like anybody else, you know, 'I don't think I locked the door.' I just kept going back to the door. And I couldn't stop myself from checking and checking.

When a striker misses a chance, people say he should have scored, but five minutes later, they don't talk about it anymore.

'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal.

With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.

Sometimes you really make bad mistakes, and you want to go back and just erase them.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I've already made them.

Freshman year of college, one of my coaches was out with family friends or whatever. Somebody said my name and kind of stuttered it or mumbled it. He was like, 'What'd you say? Mr. Biscuit?' instead of Mitchell Trubisky. It kind of stuck that week of practice, and that's what all the boys started calling me.