2,914 Quotes About Memory

Good writers are like magpies, attracted to shiny things and storing away treasures -pieces of dialogue and experience - which pop up from memory unexpectedly.

Why are some things easier to remember the more time has passed since they occurred?

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

He was thinking of that time, the way one does on long journeys when rootlessness and boredom, lack of sleep or routine can summon from out of nowhere random stretches of the past, make them as real as a haunting. --Solar

I began to curse the past for passing.

[D]as Gedächtnis [ist] schwach und der Lauf eines Lebens kurz und alles [geschieht] so rasch, dass wir den Zusammenhang zwischen den Ereignissen nicht mehr sehen, die Folgen der Taten nicht mehr ermessen können, wir glauben an die Fiktion der Zeit, an Gegenwart, Vergangenheit und Zukunft, aber es kann auch sein, dass alles gleichzeitig geschieht [...]

The blossoms fall just once each winter, yet in our memories, they fall every day.

But memory and time aren’t friends. They reject each other, they hurry in opposite directions, pulling the binding taut between them, threatening to snap.

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.