2,914 Quotes About Memory

I could not persuade her that a place does not merely exist, that it has to be invented in one's imagination.

The double-crossed, might-have-been history of my country is not the study of what actually took place here: it's the study of historians' studies. . . .Memories are their own descendants masquerading as the ancestors of the present.

I looked in vain for LaRoue, my cruelty toward her now in me like a splinter, where it would sit for years in my helpless memory, the skin growing around; what else can memory do? It can do nothing; It pretends to eat the shrapnel of your acts, yet it cannot swallow or chew.

They expected the crowd that had already gathered, golden in the torchlight of dawn. Some were tired. Some were smiling. The latter stunned Isaiah, but not Samuel. These were people after all. There was, therefore, some kind of happiness to be found in someone else being humiliated for once. Failure of memory prevented the empathy that should have been natural. Samuel knew, though, that it was selective memory, the kind that was cultivated here among the forget-me-nots.

Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.

Memory is like a cat. It comes and wraps itself around you when you least desire it, and the moment you seek it out, it disappears.

Victims never forget, winners do and very quickly

...there was something in the texture of the weave that felt happy: theecho of a memory so far down in his soul it was all emotion, aburst of colour and warmth, adrift from time and place.

As husband and wifeWe’ll never doubt our love,Let us enjoy our fill tonightAnd cherish our conjugal felicity,In this blissful momentHolding your hand,I let out a long sighMy tears—Enjoy the prime of your life,Do not forget our time in gleeSafe and sound, I’ll come back to you.Though dead, my love won’t die with me.