2,914 Quotes About Memory

Make someone feel something and you will never be forgotten.

Why does the past do this? Why does it linger instead of receding? Why does it return with such a force sometimes that the real place in which one stands or sits or lies, the place in which one's corporeal body most undeniably exists, dissolves as if it were nothing more than a mirage? The past cannot be grasped; it is not possible to return in time, to regather what was lost or carelessly shrugged off, so why these sudden ambushes, these flourishes of memory?

Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?

The root of oppression is loss of memory

Tomorrow is a memory best forgotten.

I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn't think about Alaska, wondered whether I should hope for a time when she would be a distant memory - recalled only on the anniversary of her death, or maybe a couple of weeks after, remembering only after having forgotten.

It was like trying to recall a forgotten dream—each time I felt close to remembering where we’d met, the memories slipped away.

If rewriting equals rereading, we must logically conclude that writing is reading. If this is indeed the case, how could we possibly write under a ban on reading? The only way left is mouth-to-mouth – poets and storytellers recite their pieces and before we can commit them to memory, everything vanishes into thin air.

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library