Quotes About Memories

June, Nebraska

On his childhood] You know, I would like to think that I was much more poetic and sensitive than anybody else, but I don't think it was true.

On his childhood] I'm sure mine was happier than I imagine in retrospect. I look back and think, Oh poetic me, but it simply was not true. I was out playing Kick-the-Can along with everyone else.

All through her childhood, Sarah had known what food she would eat. Friday was chicken. Wednesday lamb chops. That was the meat. Tuesdays meant fish, and Thursdays egg salad and potato latkes. Only Monday was unpredictable.

Yet old Paris was still there, around almost every corner, with her memories of centuries past, and of lives relived. Memories as haunting as an old, half-forgotten tune that, when played again--in another age, in another key, whether on harp or hurdy-gurdy--is still the same. This was her enduring grace.

What if memories were just memories, without any consolatory or persecutory power? Would they exist at all, or was it always emotional pressure that summoned images from what was potentially all of experience so far?

As he poured himself a drink, David thought about his dead father-in-law, Dudley Craig, a charming, drunken Scotsman who had been dismissed by Eleanor's mother, Mary, when he became too expensive to keep.

I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use for their words leave them as part of their children's inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted in special places during conversations, all are passed along to the next heir.

If there is a heaven, it should be like all the places you love or the places you've never been but wish you'd visited while you were still alive. -Giselle

My head fills up with images of past gatherings there: pep rallies, award ceremonies, talent shows, speaker days, career days, holiday pageants, all things that Isabelle and I attended together, even while sitting in different parts of the auditorium with our own sets of friends.

We already have posterity, I said. When?' We were babies and we grew old

No. He had a few fruitcake sympathisers, of course—but there was nothing ecclesiastical about it. That came afterwards. The Santiago was largely secular, but they couldn't engineer religion out of the human psyche that easily. They took what Sky had done and fused his deeds with what they chose to remember from home; saving this and discarding that as they saw fit. It took a few generations until they had all the details worked out, but then there was no stopping them.

To live is better than not to live. Even for a few hours, in the company of friends.

This is the way that I think about my life, and I hope that you'll think of your life too. You should think about your life hoping that there will be many moments in it about which you can say; There is no place I'd rather be, there is no thing I'd rather be doing, there is nobody I'd rather be with, & this I will remember well.

I've been to many funerals of funny people, and they're some of the funniest days you'll ever have, because the emotions run high.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.

We poke the fires of negativity with memories: past failures, past conflicts, past betrayals and humiliations. Constantly we rake the coals seeking to know the self in the light and heat of their pain. The last thing people will abandon, said Gurdjieff, is their suffering.

Sunnybank Gray Dawn outlived all the Little People I have spoken of—except Tippy—in this book. Dawn was the last of the great Sunnybank collies. He died on May 30, 1929, leaving bitter heartaches behind him. Peace to his white soul!)

The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.

We can't rewalk the exact footprints we make in the stories of our lives but we'll hear again our footprints like the lullabies our parents sang us the moment our stories end Perhaps out of our footprints our children will nurse wiser lullabies

Olá, guardador de rebanhos, Aí à beira da estrada, Que te diz o vento que passa?' 'Que é vento, e que passa, E que já passou antes, E que passará depois. E a ti o que te diz?' 'Muita coisa mais do que isso, Fala-me de muitas outras coisas. De memórias e de saudades E de coisas que nunca foram.' 'Nunca ouviste passar o vento. O vento só fala do vento. O que lhe ouviste foi mentira, E a mentira está em ti.

The bird of youth flies away and doesn't come back. Fly, boy, fly!

If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page.