Quotes About Memories

Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times.

she was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn't safely criticize anymore, because you didn't have the right. You'd lost your immunity.

It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one. She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn't all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And yes, ultimately it hadn't worked out, but that was okay. Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times. She thought about that

Do you think you were locked in a cupboard as a child?" Cecilia had asked him once (she wouldn't have put it past his mother), but he said he was pretty sure he wasn't.

You're like a favorite pillow. I have to pack you wherever I go.

remembering all the glorious moments, one after the other after the other, her children's ecstatic faces looking for their parents in the stands, looking for their approval, looking for their love, knowing it was there, knowing—she hoped they knew this—that it would always be there, even long after she and Stan were gone, because love like that was infinite.

it was possible this was their first Delaney Christmas ever with just the six of them, because growing up they'd always had the two grandmothers at Christmas lunch, gently lobbing passive-aggressive compliments back and forth across the table.

It's amazing how friends can slip through your fingers, how your social network can vanish like it never existed.

But things change. People change. It just happens. It's just life. The fact that you're getting a divorce doesn't change the fact that you had all those wonderful times. And I swear

It wasn't just that her memories of the last ten years were back. It was that her true self, as formed by those ten years, was back. As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadn't experienced ten years of living.

Oh my Lord, there was his precious laminator, which Troy got him last Christmas, thus beginning Stan's obsession with laminating anything he could find: instructions for using the TV remote (admittedly helpful), the article in the local paper about the sale of Delaneys, inspiring sporting quotes he printed out from the internet and wanted to remember. He'd laminate Joy if he got the chance.

Sometimes she felt like she was always dragging the memories of these relationships along with her, like three old tin cans on a string.

It gave me a shock. A sudden shock of indescribable pain, like when you're a kid, and you're hit on the nose with a basketball on a cold morning, and you cannot believe how much it hurts, and your friends all laugh and you want your mother so bad.

She realized with a shock that some of the happiest moments of her life had taken place over the last few months.

Ed was meant to be on kid duty while she hosted the book club. He'd read the book, but he didn't want to join the club. He said the idea of book clubs brought back horrible memories of pretentious classmates in English Lit. 'If anyone uses the phrases "marvelous imagery" or "narrative arc", slap them for me,' he'd said.

Funerals all have the same smells and sounds.

Jewelry and clothes for Isabel and Polly. A piece of the Berlin Wall for Esther.

guess Jack is too big for sandboxes now, although it's still there in their backyard. Sometimes, when Patrick is at work and Jack is at school, I go to the house and eat my lunch in the backyard.

It was nice to hold on to the memories of those fierce, desperate hugs when the hugging stopped.

Connie had been far to busy having a good time, remembers Sophie.

Tess preferred people from her past to stay in the past. Ex-boyfriends, old school friends, past colleagues--really, what was the point of them? Life moves on. Tess quite enjoyed reminiscing ABOUT people she once knew, not WITH them.

The last time she had had anything close to an enemy, she was in primary school herself. It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be like going back to school yourself.

It is so strange that you can end up having such polite, awkward conversations with somebody with whom you once shared such intimate moments.

They didn't say anything for a few seconds, and then they both dissolved into the sort of helpless, wheezing laughter unique to women who had spent their school days together.