Quotes About Memory

Con quale frequenza raccontiamo la storia della nostra vita? Aggiustandola, migliorandola, applicandovi tagli strategici? E più avanti si va negli anni, Meno corriamo il rischio che qualcuno intorno a noi ci possa contestare quella versione dei fatti, ricordandoci che la nostra vita non è la nostra vita, ma solo la storia che ne abbiamo raccontato. Agli altri, ma soprattutto noi stessi. da Il senso di una fine

All'improvviso mi sembra che una delle differenze tra la gioventù è la vecchiaia potrebbe essere questa: da giovani, ci inventiamo un futuro diverso per noi stessi; da vecchi, un passato diverso per gli altri. da Il senso di una fine

Vivimos con suposiciones muy fáciles, ¿no? Por ejemplo, que la memoria es igual a sucesos más tiempo. Pero es algo mucho más extraño. ¿Quién dijo que la memoria es lo que creíamos que habíamos olvidado? Y debería ser obvio que el tiempo no actúa como un fijador, sino más bien como un disolvente. Pero no conviene —no es útil— creer esto; no nos ayuda a seguir adelante; por lo tanto, lo pasamos por alto.

Then I thought about Adrian. My old friend who had killed himself. And this had been the last communication he had ever received from me. A libel on his character and an attempt to destroy the first and last love affair of his life. And when I had written that time would tell, I had underestimated, or rather miscalculated: time was telling not against them, it was telling against me.

First love fixes a life for ever: this much I have discovered over the years.

You remembered your past in cheerful terms because this validated your existence. You didn't have to see your life as any kind of triumph – his own had hardly been that – but you did need to tell yourself that it had been interesting, enjoyable, purposeful.

few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. If I can't be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left. That's the best I can manage.

What is History? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors, I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.

It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.

So (and this would have happened earlier, but I am only remembering it now): I am visiting her one afternoon.

One test might be whether, as the years pass, you come out better from your own story, or worse. To come out worse might indicate that you are being more truthful. On the other hand, there is the danger of being retrospectively anti-heroic: making yourself out to have behaved worse than you actually did can be a form of self-praise.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine. Perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description.

It is only a metaphor—or the worst of dreams; yet there are metaphors which sit more powerfully in the brain than remembered events.

Julian Barnes

She has only a ghostplay on some frayed screen of memory, which she takes to be the present.

What had Old Joe Hunt answered when I knowingly claimed that history was the lies of the victors? "As long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated." Do we remember that enough when it comes to our private lives?

He survived to tell the tale"—that's what people say, don't they? History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.

How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so?

Es menos el recuerdo de un suceso que el recuerdo de una fotografía del suceso. Y hoy día, como hemos perdido altura, precisión, foco, ya no confiamos tanto en la fotografía como en otra época. Las viejas instantáneas de tiempos más felices parecen haberse vuelto menos primarias, menos fotografías de la vida misma y más fotografías de fotografías. O, dicho de otro modo, tu recuerdo de tu vida —tu vida anterior

Y lo mismo ocurre con nuestra vida: tan clara, tan segura, hasta que por una razón u otra —el globo se mueve, la nube se dispersa, el sol cambia de ángulo— la imagen se pierde para siempre, se torna accesible sólo al recuerdo, se convierte en anécdota.

Sometimes the past may be a greased pig; sometimes a bear in its den; and sometimes merely the flash of a parrot, two mocking eyes that spark at you from the forest.

Istorija n?ra nugal?toj? melai <...>, tai veikiau išgyvenusi?j? prisiminimai, ir dauguma j? n?ra nei nugal?tojai, nei pralaim?jusieji.

Istorija yra žinomyb?, atsirandanti atminties netobulum? ir dokument? netikslum? susikirtimo taške.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.'