Quotes About Recollection

I think that when you remember, remember, remember everything like that, you could go on until you remember what was there before you were in the world.

The feelings resembled memories; but memories of what? Apparently one can remember things that have never happened.

It was better not to remember such terrible details.

Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he remembered.

And had Eliot really been awake for the whole thing? His brain dealt out a sloppy fan of mental Polaroids, out of sequence: an image of Janet kissing Eliot, of her hand working diligently between Eliot's legs. Had she really been weeping? Had he kissed Eliot? A vivid sense memory of somebody else's stubble, surprisingly scratchy, chafing his cheek and upper lip.

Our native susceptibilities and acquired tastes determine which of the many qualities in an object shall most impress us, and be most clearly recalled. One man remembers the combustible properties of a substance, which to another is memorable for its polarising property; to one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers.

Dick Cheney ... and that's all I gotta say. Isn't it great that we've reached that point? You don't even have to say "Dick Cheney, the Vice President who shot his friend in the face while hunting". "Dick Cheney", everybody goes "Waha!" and we move on.

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked.

My mind is vacant on names, but I know him as well as anything. When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back.

The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you.

I do have a vague recollection of reviving the cover of The Beatles' 'Every Little Thing,' but I don't know if that was just our riffing on it in rehearsal. I don't think we ever did it actually in the show.

The value of having a computer, to me, is that it'll remember everything you do. It's a databank.

Don't be fooled. Charlie remembers things the way he wants to remember them. I suppose we all do...And then we spend the rest of our lives basing the way we think about our families on what we THOUGHT happened--instead of what really did.

Talith confronted the self-contained prince she recalled much too clearly from the tumultuous events that surrounded a failed coronation.

You know, that's the trouble with drinking. Come the morning, you can never remember their names.

Quite like old times,' the room says.

There is no control over memory.

Everyone remembers things which never happened. And it is common knowledge that people often forget things which did. Either we are all fantasists and liars or the past has nothing definite in it.

and what is memory but a rope slung across time?

Sure, he said. He started moving the bits around. Lets see. This looks like it must say . . . and so then this would go here . . . and this . . . He paused and looked up at her. Haven't we done this before?

But I can't see anything any more: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, nor whether they are remembered or invented.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered.

On the street, I get either 'Are you the Red Viper?' or 'Are you Javier Pena?'

I'm very interested in structure, how multiple stories are assembled in different ways; that is what memory does as well.