Quotes About Memory

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that 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.

Man simply cannot live as the time-animal and the art-animal that he is, without history.

I've taken to talking to the ground as if it is Stacy. I tell her how happy I am to still be with her, even though we can't see each other. I'm sure she feels the same way, comforting her lonely nights by knowing that I am still inside her, thinking about her. After my voice starts to get scratchy, I just speak to her in my head.

Now that the day is repeating, I have no idea what to do with myself," Lyle says. "I can't finish the book I've been working on for the past five months. Every time I go to sleep, the words I write disappear. It's frustrating as hell. The only books I'll ever write are the ones that are already finished. Anything I do from now on won't last.

For a pair of eyes and a pair of ears to fix images and sounds in the temporal order in which they happen is no easy task; their memory enjoys making fun of the tyranny of time.

Esos desechos de celuloide, esos sobrantes en la película del recuerdo de mi vida son los que hoy intento proyectar en la pantalla de la memoria, los que hoy me parecen, aun en su confusión, tan vívidos y tan cercanos.

There is nothing new except what is forgotten. —Rose Bertin

Porque las cosas y las personas que sólo se han visto con los ojos de la imaginación pueden seguir viviendo y siendo iguales, aunque desaparezcan en la realidad. Cuando se han visto y luego se dejan de ver, el cambio es mayor.

El tiempo transcurre a hurtadillas, disimulando no le vemos andar. Pero de pronto volvemos la cabeza y encontramos imágenes que se han desplazado a nuestras espaldas, fotos fijas, sin referencia de fecha, como las figuras de los niños del escondite inglés, a los que nunca se pillaba en movimiento

Esta tarde, por ejemplo, es distinta a cualquier otra y nunca se repetirá. Y cuando tú y yo seamos viejos, ni siquiera nos acordaremos. Es imposible apresar el tiempo, ¿no te parece?

Para visitar un recuerdo conviene -según creencia bastante extendida- haberlo cultivado antes.

When no one is left to tell what happened, family histories keep their secrets.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.

I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,...

I hold him in the casket of my widow's head as he held me upon that next best bed.

I want you to know I haven't put this behind me. That night sits inside me as if it were yesterday. Time passing doesn't touch it.

Memory has no power but what the soul chooses to make of it.

The world goes on, little Seri," he said. "A soldier never dies. His blood makes the grass green for his children.

Forgetting means remembering at an inconvenient time.

A friend is someone who hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

I am wandering inside, wandering through my past, trying to see if there is a place there strong enough to hold me. —Ruth Mendenberg

If I forget the bad, I have to forget the good, too. The memories are all I have now of my family. And I don't want to lose them.