top of page
.png){kind=small}
Memory Quotes
"What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them."
82
"I think all writing is done through memory."
64
"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things."
51
"The reality that I had known no longer existed. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years."
48
"For we think back through our mothers if we are women."
47
"If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered."
42
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."
35
"Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all."
31
"When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory."
31
"You have a... remarkable memory.""I remember everything about you. You're the one who wasn't paying attention."
29
"Have you ever sat on a window seat, in the train of your memories while it's raining heavily? Rain has this ridiculous power of waking up all the angels and demons inside us at once, doesn't it? All of a sudden there is a war inside us, between both the sides. We can do nothing but clench our fists and watch our train derail and take a path we have never come across before. All we know at that point of time is that we are going to crash somewhere. Either our demons win or the angels, we are going to get wounded somewhere."
26
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
24
"The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama."
24
"I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does."
23
"Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet."
23
"Through dreams and ideas we are seduced to go back to particular places and instances of our past. In the course of the years, these singular moments and spaces of our history very often receive then another color and dimension. Our mind tries however to tame and keep in control the phantoms of times past. If not so, our memory can be subject to an irreversible mutilation. ['The mutilated memory']"
22
"Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so."
22
"He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no pleasure in looking back, and he did it as seldom as possible."
22
"And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die."
21
"If I never see you again I will always carry youinsideoutsideon my fingertipsand at brain edgesand in centerscentersof what I am ofwhat remains."
21
"Our feet are grape-squashed in memoriesour skins are still flushedfrom the touch of summer's lips."
21
"June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear...So thinking, he slept.And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928."
21
"When time furtively slips like sand through the fingers and our memory becomes tired and lazy, we recognize we are at war. We are at war with forgetfulness. ['The past was her best friend']"
21
"She sat there alone after getting drenched enough by rain. In the silence of the midnight, Each drop that fell made a sound that was loud enough to wake all the memories inside her one after the other, before she could know what was happening she was lost somewhere in the past where the pictures in mind pushed her into a state of chaotic happiness and a blissful pain."
20
"Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory."
19
"A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial."
19
"Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not."
19
"The best Qualification of a Prophet is to have a good Memory."
18
bottom of page