Quotes About Recollection

I have no memory for what happens in what books. I don't know when I might remember a scene, but beats me what book it's in because there are 14 of them now.

If not for my diaries, I would swear I had lived only half as long as I have. Long periods of my life seem to have vanished. And now I read the passages and wonder who I was when I wrote them, for I cannot remember the events of my life. There are times I sit and wonder where it all has gone.

And though she didn't know it then, whenever her thoughts drifted back toward the past, she would always remember that this was how it all began.

You used that one a month ago," she said calmly. "You're probably

It's just that in the old days, when you eventually got your pictures back from the drugstore, you never went backward through time. You shuffled through the twenty-four holiday snapshots, only seven of which were any good, put them in a drawer and forgot about them.

Once, coming out of the cool, dark lab into the heat of the desert sun, he'd briefly wondered if the emptiness he'd been so staunchly guarding was, not the absence of memory, but actually a memory itself: a recollection of the blazing white potential that had existed before he was born. The emptiness an infant possesses in the very first moments, when consciousness begins like the answer to a question never asked.

The memories were too perfect: take one detail away and they collapsed into disorder.

If I go see a play or a movie for a second time, it's as if I didn't see it at all the first time, even if the first time was just recently. I have no idea who anyone in People magazine is.

Some learned and remembered, others never do.

remembered in bits and pieces. A storm at sea, drowning waves swamping

perform." "I recall a performance

I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation." —Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life.

It's peculiar what you remember when you're not trying.

I rarely remember the names or faces of nonfictional people.

There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.

It's not true that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. At least, not all of it. Some of your life might flash. Other portions of your life it might take you years and years to recall. That, I think, is the function of Hell: It's a place of remembering. Beyond that, the purpose of Hell is not so much to forget the details of our lives as it is to forgive them.

Ev­ery­thing you re­mem­ber is wrong.

Don't quote me on any of this. It's been a long time since I've been test­ed

Unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.

There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.

Se pueden repetir los mismos milagros una y otra vez mientras nadie recuerde la última vez

Everything you remember is wrong.

It's funny, what you remember about a person.

Schlechte Erinnerungen sind besser als gar keine.