Quotes About Recollection

Geschichten sind unser Gedächtnis, Bibliotheken die Lagerstätten für dieses Gedächtnis und Lesen das Handwerk, mit dem wir dieses Gedächtnis neu erschaffen können, indem wir es rezitieren und glossieren, es wieder in unsere eigene Erfahrung rückübersetzen und so auf dem aufbauen, was frühere Generationen für bewahrenswert hielten.

The myth that the artist needs suffering to create tells the story the wrong way round... the song comes afterwards, not in the writhing of misery but in the recollection of that misery and the respite from it provided by the writing.

Erinnerungen und Scheinerinnerungen. Ich glaube, mich genau an etwas zu erinnern. Eine Notiz auf dem Nachsatzpapier eines Buches, das ich durch Zufall aufschlage, beweist, dass ich mich irre. Die Sache ist irgendwo anders passiert, mit jemand anderem, zu einer anderen Zeit.

In the street he drew a deep breath. He was free. Free from recollection and anticipation. Free, for an hour or two, to refuse to admit the existence of the past or future. Free to live only now and here, in the place where his body happened at each instant to be. Free -- but the boast was idle; he went on remembering. Escape was not so easy a matter.

En la misma reunión, un cóctel, en que yo la conocí. ¿Lo recuerda? No, no lo recuerdo. No recuerdo a nadie de los que participaron en aquella ocasión, salvo a Helen. Cuando se ha estado a punto de ahogarse, uno recuerda quién le salvó, no a los espectadores del muelle.

No pedía ya la libertad, sino la memoria

Se devo dimenticarti mi ricorderò di farlo, ma non chiedermi poi di dimenticare che me ne sono ricordato.

Maybe to have a memory you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle.

It is the onion, memory, that makes me cry," he said.

Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are. And who am I?

There are so many things we take in subconsciously and are unaware we ever saw. There is plenty of lumber like that in our minds.

One might forget so many exotic cheeses, he thought, but the memory of cheddar always remained.

This girl, now in her early teens, had never had a photograph of herself. There was no record of her childhood, nothing which would remind her of what she used to be. There was nothing, no image, of which she could say: That is me. And all this meant that there was nobody who had ever wanted her picture; she had simply not been special enough.

We don't forget...Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, smells of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us of who we are.

If one could not remember somebody's trousers, then jeans were the safe default. Indeed, "defaults" was a good name for jeans. I put on my defaults. It sounded quite right.

Every memory is a re-creation, not a playback. When we remember, we focus on certain facts and emotions, and become active participants in re-creating memories.

If a man write little, he had need have a great memory."[12]

He fainted. Then he came to and remembered what happened and fainted again.

I struggle again to draw this man's face in a crowd of faces: which dog-eared lines and frayed adjectives do I use? How do I sketch his visage, the way he looked to me then, at first sight, still mysterious? Among countless pairs of brown eyes, how to distinguish those two soft, open, wise ones, their gaze alert but slightly awkward, marveling? How to outline the lips, nose, brows, chin, so that I can see them afresh, as simple as a portrait on a cafe napkin?

Sorrow is tranquillity remembered in emotion.

She had a good memory, too good, perhaps, since it held her imprisoned in the past.

talked to himself under his breath fairly frequently, and often couldn't remember where he had left stuff, as though his mind was too powerful to dwell on the mundane.

It is a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." —The White Queen, Alice in Wonderland

The fact that you can't remember things doesn't mean that you haven't been shaped by them.