Quotes About Memories

Grief, I swear to God, doesn't live in the heart. It lives in the senses. And sometimes, all I want to do is cut off my nose so I can't smell her, hack my fingers off at the joint.

Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended.

We met when we were both majoring in Space Invaders with a Pub Etiquette minor at the Happy Harbor Campus of UMass/Boston.

Some ghost of myself still lived back in the days when we'd shared a bed and talked of the future. But that love we'd had and those selves we'd been were gone, placed in a box like old photographs and letters you'd never read again.

Growing up, Joe had adored his brother, Then he'd come to hate him. Now, he mostly didn't think about him. When he did, he had to admit, he missed his laugh.

time is nothing to me but a series of book-marks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me

Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.

But as the years passed, he missed her more not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.

Brendan looked at the card. He kept his eyes on it when he said, "I loved her so much. I…I ain't ever going to feel that again. I mean, it don't happen twice, right?" He looked up at Whitey and Sean. His eyes were dry, but the pain in them was something Sean wanted to duck from. "It don't happen once, most cases," Whitey said.

The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

Old soldiers never die, you know; they only fade away.

I've walked through this broken life for so long and yet the detritus of my past hails down on me at the most unexpected moments. I learned in the most difficult way imaginable that you can never fully appreciate what you have until it's taken away.

I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking too, and for the same reason. I don't know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each others arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces.

Time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is-in the blink of an eye, a mother can see the child again as they were when they were born, when they learned how to walk, as they were at any age-at any time, even when the child is fully grown or a parent themselves.

He splayed a hand out over the photographs, trembling fingers not quite touching the shiny surface, and then he turned and leaned toward me, slowly, with the improbable grace of a tall tree falling. He buried his face in my shoulder and went very quietly and thoroughly to pieces.

Where d'ye think he is now? Jenny said suddenly. Ian, I mean. He glanced at the house, then at the new grave waiting, but of course that wasn't Ian any more. He was panicked for a moment, for his earlier emptiness returning-but then it came to him, and, without surprise, he knew what it was Ian had said to him. On your right, man. On his right. Guarding his weak side. He's just here, he said to Jenny, nodding to the spot between them. Where he belongs.

I heard you went to Ireland...I haven't seen it in many years. Is it still green then, and beautiful? Wet as a bath sponge and mud to the knees but, aye, it was green enough.

Don't move, Sassenach, Jamie's voice came softly, next to me. Just for a moment, mo duinne--be still. I obligingly froze, until he touched me on the shoulder. That's all right, Sassenach, he said, with a smile in his voice. It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.

There was only one small probelm. It wasn't Frank I reached for, deep in the night, waking out of sleep. It wasn't his smooth, lithe body that walked my dreams a roused me so that I came awake moist and gasping, my heart pounding from the half-remembered touch. But I would never touch that man again. Jamie, I whispered. Oh Jamie.

It was possible to leave things behind—places, people, memories—at least for a time. But places held tight to the things that had happened in them, and to come again to a place you had once lived was to be brought face-to-face with what you had done there and who you had been.

I have noticed," she said slowly, "that time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is—in the blink of an eye, the mother can see the child again as it was when it was born, when it learned to walk, as it was at any age—at any time, even when the child is fully grown and a parent itself.

Claire. The name knifed across his heart with a pain that was more racking than anything his body had ever been called on to withstand.

Ye dinna stop loving someone just because they're deid," she said reprovingly. "I canna suppose they stop lovin' you, either.

Claire," he said quietly. "Tomorrow I will die. This child Ã¢â'¬Â¦ is all that will be left of me—ever. I ask ye, Claire—I beg you—see it safe." I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.