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633fd24 The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before. loss memory John Green
416b0de Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. time reality past injuries scars memory Cormac McCarthy
d6247b4 People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't. humor recall memory Christopher Paolini
4546411 I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. moving-on memories future past homelessness belonging leaving attachment uncertainty roots home reminiscence memory Beryl Markham
0c2c5b8 We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. loss fear hope life love the-infernal-devices jem-carstairs shadowhunters memory Cassandra Clare
9a264f8 Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always inspirational beginnings memory Dante
4d18af8 Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. relationships memory Haruki Murakami
e9f0722 "You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel." memory Haruki Murakami
1f85264 I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been. past love intimacy memory Raymond Carver
b069569 The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings. john-smith life-experience memory Pittacus Lore
d91f3b9 Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, dont you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. memory Cormac McCarthy
ab3d79d Scars are just another kind of memory. inspirational-quotes inspirational scars memory M.L. Stedman
c78a487 What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? marriage sorrow relationship death sadness love fellowship memory George Eliot
e033b71 Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. recollection memory William Faulkner
f8a8dd5 Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. memory Neil Gaiman
6bfa73d Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker memory Bram Stoker
30236fc Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind. memory Haruki Murakami
9b8a1b1 ...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. pain memory pleasure Jane Austen
a9ed738 Memory is the happiness of being alone. memory Lois Lowry
38e03a3 Time's the thief of memory time roland-deschain memory Stephen King
62239c4 O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude... poetry rectitude minds invisible dead memory George Eliot
6026335 There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. truth falsehood recollection memory Harold Pinter
4ae085b It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' says the White Queen to Alice. carroll memory Lewis Carroll
1f88d6b Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers. courage writing empowerment strength guenter-grass record-of-life creative-process experience memory Salman Rushdie
640a893 Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory. persistence hurts stephen-king novels requirements talent misery remember scars writers memory stories Stephen King
217e0ae If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't? loss love jodi-picoult plain-truth wish remember sad memory Jodi Picoult
7c45f29 Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both. heroes loras-tyrell jaime-lannister villains knights legend memory stories George R.R. Martin
67a1bac I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday sweet and fragrant, between its leaves. roses memory L.M. Montgomery
2394e5e Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. memory Marilynne Robinson
84967ae He looked at the silver pocketknife in his hand. An idea came to him - possibly the stupidest, craziest idea he'd had since he thought, Hey, I'll get Percy to swim in the River Styx! He'll love me for that! past nico-di-angelo memory Rick Riordan
6d19b2b How often since then has she wondered what might have happened if she'd tried to remain with him; if she'd returned Richard's kiss on the corner of Bleeker and McDougal, gone off somewhere (where?) with him, never bought the packet of incense or the alpaca coat with rose-shaped buttons. Couldn't they have discovered something larger and stranger than what they've got. It is impossible not to imagine that other future, that rejected future, as taking place in Italy or France, among big sunny rooms and gardens; as being full of infidelities and great battles; as a vast and enduring romance laid over friendship so searing and profound it would accompany them to the grave and possibly even beyond. She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself. Or then again maybe not, Clarissa tells herself. That's who I was. This is who I am--a decent woman with a good apartment, with a stable and affectionate marriage, giving a party. Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port. Still, there is this sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that. Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment. Richard had stood beside her at the pond's edge at dusk, wearing cut-off jeans and rubber sandals. Richard had called her Mrs. Dalloway, and they had kissed. His mouth had opened to hers; (exciting and utterly familiar, she'd never forget it) had worked its way shyly inside until she met its own. They'd kissed and walked around the pond together. It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk. The anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other. memory Michael Cunningham
22f78a9 "Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on." memories writing advice getting-started memoir remembering childhood incest memory Anne Lamott
503f538 No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. words story history humanity reality semiotics truthful narrative memory Roger Zelazny
8f35981 Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way. memory psychology H.P. Lovecraft
ffef2ec What needs my for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in piled stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? shakespeare poetry hallowed pyramid relics labor fame honour heir william-shakespeare memory John Milton
c79e963 At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory. words time space perception memory Isabel Allende
57058d6 People always talk like there's a bright line between imagination and memory, but there isn't, at least not for me. I remember what I've imagined and imagine what I remember. memory John Green
15a5aa8 Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it. worth pain love heartache hurt memory Jeanette Winterson
6c3abcc Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory. evaporation memory weather Haruki Murakami
0473612 You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know. understanding remembrance knowledge memory Amy Tan
89276d3 Or maybe we'll make a home somewhere inside ourselves, to carry with us wherever we go- which is the way I carry my mother now. tris memory Veronica Roth
7103769 ... And the boy whose hair remained the color of lemons forever. color death lemon forever hair memory Markus Zusak
603bddd [W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory. past memory Milan Kundera
bfa7591 "[...]my memory is reasonably good--unlike yours, dear sir!" "Mine is erratic," he said imperturbably. "I remember only what interests me." memory Georgette Heyer
acf53b1 Then one morning she'd begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn't remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she'd realized again what she'd learned at five when her mother left - that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she'd worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother's voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree's heartwood. (51) grief sorrow endure forgetting remembering memory Ron Rash
2246a07 Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now. woman memory Ann Patchett
edff6c9 suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others... He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds - or on persons devoted to them - have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life. When termed a 'dirty little atheist' he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If had ceased his writings with 'The Rights of Man' he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But 'The Age of Reason' cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen - a greater loss to them than to . I was always interested in the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty. Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up as an example of everything bad. The memory of will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty - who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause - can be permanently obscured by such attacks. should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands. { } prejudice draught-burner hollow-candle iron-bridge teddy-roosevelt inventor misrepresentation roosevelt theodore-roosevelt greatness paine thomas-paine atheist memory Thomas A. Edison
ef4a23c He remembered Apollo, smiling and tanned and completely cool in his shades. Thalia had said, He's hot. He's the sun god, Percy replied. That's not what I meant. Why was Nico thinking about that now? The random memory irritated him, made him feel jittery. nico-di-angelo memory Rick Riordan
e745040 The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting. time speed memory Milan Kundera
0c1fe0b And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone. wonder wisdom memory Terry Pratchett
a70ccd9 We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations. mourning grief loss immortality sorrow death life-goes-on memory John Banville
d0dc707 Memory was a curse, yes, he thought, but it was also the greatest gift. Because if you lost memory you lost everything. blood-and-gold vampire-chronicles thorne curse gift remembering memory vampires Anne Rice
28e66c4 Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business. time history meaning life philosophy rest memory Julian Barnes
5df35db How awful it was, thought Tessa, remembering Fats the toddler, the way tiny ghosts of your living children haunted your heart; they could never know, and would hate it if they did, how their growing was a constant bereavement. loss growing-up memory J.K. Rowling
98cb8ac A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved. writer writing vision jack-kerouac memory Jack Kerouac
160f7f5 "What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ... 'Finn?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)" history politics triumphalism victors imperialism memory Julian Barnes
1468321 Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand. time memory Marcel Proust
24281c1 I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich. time plants landscape memory John Steinbeck
059a179 one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. loss happiness love time-traveling childhood-memory mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
1215276 Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water. reality remember memory Sherwood Smith
b88cd8d Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. poverty work knowledge memory George Eliot
2fb1d2f In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was. reality compromise self-pity remorse regret memory Julian Barnes
e43b6f1 The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory. past regret memory Michel Faber
5916a4d I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out. loss happiness love mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
2604489 Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn And broils roots out the work of masonry, Nor mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till judgement that yourself arise, You in this, and dwell in lovers eyes. sonnet-55 monuments fame remembrance posterity memory William Shakespeare
b65bfea He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us! Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table. After about a week, his welcome wore thin. Campers would jump when he walked up behind them. He would emerge from the shadows at the campfire, startle somebody and see the discomfort in their eyes: Are you still here? Why are you here? It didn't help that immediately after the war with Kronos, Annabeth and Percy had started dating ... Nico set down his fartura. Suddenly it didn't taste so good. past heartbreak life love nico-di-angelo memory Rick Riordan
6f04588 I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun. memory nostalgia Haruki Murakami
2650662 Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time. sleep sanity time inspirational rest memory Roger Zelazny
1701523 The thought of her gave me such a continual anguish that I could no more forget her than an aching tooth. It was involuntary, hopeless, compulsive. For years she had been the first thing I remembered when I woke up, the last thing that drifted through my mind as I went to sleep, and during the day she came to me obtrusively, obsessively, always with a painful shock. pain compulsion anguish compulsive hopeless obsession unrequited-love memory Donna Tartt
b1f5bb5 Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros? beric-dondarrion hole thoros knight fire blood memory trauma George R.R. Martin
3d96c6b What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember , the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly. marriage memories memory nostalgia Richard Ford
6af17ee Memory is the basis of every journey. stephen-king journey memory Stephen King
01f22a7 I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.... Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die. memory Vladimir Nabokov
093844f Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced. faith life memory Markus Zusak
17fb947 And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream. girl memory Marcel Proust
c7d0afc "Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason. The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning. Their shining, polished brain reflects, as in a mirror, the things you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but to him they are meaningless. Although memory and reason are wholly different faculties, the one does not really develop apart from the other. Before the age of reason the child receives images, not ideas; and there is this difference between them: images are merely the pictures of external objects, while ideas are notions about those objects determined by their relations." -- reason memory Jean-Jacques Rousseau
76b84d0 She knew with suddeness and ease that this moment would be with her always, within hand's reach of memory. She doubted if they all sensed it - they had seen the world - but even George was silent for a minute as they looked, and the scene, the smell, even the sound of the band playing a faintly recognisable movie theme, was locked forever in her, and she was at peace. memory nostalgia Stephen King
45820e4 The undead did not love, but they remembered love with a savage loyalty. undead memory Kim Harrison
b6ad4d5 " was a great man. a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth -- and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. Great orators, great soldiers, great lawyers, often use their gifts for a most unholy cause. We meet to pay a tribute of love and respect to because he used his matchless power for the good of man. good courage goodness love ingersoll robert-g-ingersoll robert-green-ingersoll robert-ingersoll eulogy praise greatness tribute respect honor power memory Clarence Darrow
08f6747 Small children believe themselves to be gods, or some of them do, and they can only be satisfied when the rest of the world goes along with their way of seeing things. myth personal memory Neil Gaiman
95e9281 That brief walk was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering. [p214] recollection memory John Green
9885a9b Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's. grudges savant-syndrome forgiveness memory Christopher Hitchens
9b51f3c Just for the record, the weather today is increasing turmoil with a possible physical and emotional breakdown. shame memory Chuck Palahniuk
cd04e9d Piper: it looks like we have hole. Percy: Yeah we've got a dam hole! (LOL-ing) Piper: What! Percy: Inside joke. (still LOL-ing) Piper: Whatever. humor thalia-grace percy-jackson memory Rick Riordan
182f6d1 He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch. forgetting moment memory Graham Greene
d0a13e1 Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me. memory Neil Gaiman
24f4637 Memory loss is one way of coping with damage. memory-loss memory Jeanette Winterson
65482d5 My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges. metaphor mothers memory Vladimir Nabokov
c6babb9 We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. Even the most voluminous archives cannot help. memory Milan Kundera
6929cbf Remember the botched brothel-visit in L'Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory. happiness life memory pleasure Julian Barnes
8bda5a8 What business does memory have with time? time memory Jess Walter
b0d49c9 The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. metaphor humor recollection memory Terry Pratchett
4193ac9 You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. memory Fyodor Dostoyevsky
79d71e3 And if Amsterdam was hell, and if hell was a memory, then he realized that perhaps there was some purpose to his being lost. Cut off from everything that was familiar to him, unable to discover even a single point of reference, he saw that his steps, by taking him nowhere, were taking him him nowhere but into himself. He was wandering inside himself, and he was lost. Far from troubling him, this state of being lost because a source of happiness, of exhilaration. He breathed it into his very bones. As if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge, he breathed it into his very bones and said to himself, almost triumphantly: I am lost. lost memory Paul Auster
09f1d20 Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long. formative-years development maturity memory Kim Stanley Robinson
211b44e The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it. past present-moment memory Cara Black
6afc3db The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was. life memory Diana Gabaldon
99f77be When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us. youth past memory Aimee Bender
867bbee Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other's arms. love monster vampire memory Holly Black
0561637 Happiness and beauty are the worst things you can have in a life, because you never forget them. They go on and on ambushing you, presumably until you die. memory M. John Harrison
05969a6 When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light. marriage love truth memory Ian McEwan
f71452c Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud? memories writing memory nostalgia Haruki Murakami
508a647 It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart--never the sensation of the moment. memory Roger Zelazny
b62c0cd You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept. laughter rememberance weeping memory Kahlil Gibran
b766eba Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments. memory Michel de Montaigne
ba57e7f That was seven years ago. The doctors told her father the memory would fade, like the big messy scar on her arm, but neither ever did. scars faded-memory monstrous tana-s-mother paranormal-romance tana-bach holly-black the-coldest-girl-in-coldtown memory Holly Black
eff8088 Only two weeks since he had left, and it was already happening. Time, blunting the edges of those sharp memories. Laila bore down mentally. What had he said? It seemed vital, suddenly, that she know. Laila closed her eyes. Concentrated. With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when Laila would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by Tariq's name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion--like the phantom pain of an amputee. Except every once in a long while, when Laila was a grown woman, ironing a shirt or pushing her children on a swing set, something trivial, maybe the warmth of a carpet beneath her feet on a hot day or the curve of a stranger's forehead, would set off a memory of that afternoon together. And it would come rushing back. The spontaneity of it. Their astonishing imprudence... It would flood her, steal her breath. But then it would pass. The moment would pass. Leave her feeling deflated, feeling noting but a vague restlessness. memory Khaled Hosseini
ab112d8 Nay! Alas for us all! And for all that walk in the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed [...] for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlorien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale. memories loyalty memory J.R.R. Tolkien
f9bd6ad Memory, therefore, not simply as the resurrection of one's private past, but an immersion in the past of others, which is to say: history - which one both participates in and is a witness to, is a part of and apart from. Everything, therefore, is present in his mind at once, as if each element were reflecting the light of all the others, and at the same time emitting its own unique and unquenchable radiance. past memory Paul Auster
2f9ec4d And Will knew what it was to see his daemon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would still feel some sensations as bright and fresh as ever: Lyra's fingers putting the fruit between his lips under the gold-and-silver trees; her warm mouth pressing against his; his daemon being torn from his unsuspecting breast as they entered the world of the dead; and the sweet rightfulness of her coming back to him at the edge of the moonlight dunes. memory Philip Pullman
04d01f6 In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure... pain memories faith hope grace-and-favor grace creator artist memory creation Madeleine L'Engle
8a5a165 Now, women forget all the things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. hurston men-and-women memory Zora Neale Hurston
2e71063 Here's to many more firsts and many more great memories. memory Christine Feehan
64bc71f I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know now the wind has been speaking to me. Only I couldn't understand because I was too scared. I am scared now as I write these words. Still, there is nothing else to do. world fear whispers wind needles forgetfulness dead nightmare memory Christopher Pike
9b20e84 "Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory." memory John Irving
ed93642 And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return. time memory Julian Barnes
420cacc I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room loss happiness love mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
40c8506 It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. madness heroes strength innocence memory James Baldwin
e0e0102 I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die. wisdom time-being memory Ruth Ozeki
7c6b918 ah km hy `nyd@ ldhkr@ wdhkrty l ttrkny bslm , tml' mkhylty bSwr , bklmt , b'lm wHb novel memory Isabel Allende
0ef0e7e Sometimes you want to remember. And sometimes you need to forget. quote the-day-before quotes memory Lisa Schroeder
24c313d Was memory always as much of a burden as it could sometimes be a blessing. burden memory Mary Balogh
7964300 Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior. past life parents-and-children memory Julian Barnes
75dc5da If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself. the-past memory Julian Barnes
9ed21e7 Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is afterwards recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special medium of manifestation throughout all the pages of his memory. woman memory Thomas Hardy
54b52b8 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. forgotten remembering memory John Green
8fdf3b6 The power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory -- of this there is no doubt. memories things memory Orhan Pamuk
dfbc4cb She knew that she had a tendency to allow her mind to wander, but surely that's what made the world interesting. One thought led to another, one memory triggered another. How dull it would be, she thought, not to be reminded of the interconnectedness of everything, how dull for the present not to evoke the past, for here not to imply there. interconnectedness daydreaming memory Alexander McCall Smith
124b1c3 I'll remember you... I remember everyone I've lost. grief loss love photo-album photograph think noir remember sad memory nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
d88c5cd I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic. memory P.D. James
4baeee0 human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions writers memory Salman Rushdie
4ab6f3f You, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon-- love unattainable idea memory Ayn Rand
6f013b4 Well, a man's mind can't stay in time the way his body does. time mind memory John Steinbeck
99e1f0f She smiles, and her eyes look as if they can see back into her memory, into all the things that have gone into making a person what they are. memories past melancholy oblivion remembering memory Lois Lowry
e7a2a2a People's lives take them strange places. They do strange things, and... well, sometimes they can't talk about them. truth strange memory stories Alan Moore
888171d Except heaven is a hope , and eden is a memory . heaven hope memory Craig Thompson
a4f2661 The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance: some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase. mind mind-games memory Gregory Maguire
0a6fd04 Memory is the enemy of wonder present wonder memory Michael Pollan
e75ebcd Humility is as good for the soul as it is for the memory humility lessons-learned memory Patricia C. Wrede
00d67e6 . . . things whose perishing had been arrested by their power to make her love them. human love perish remembrance remember memory Denis Johnson
b56366d Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember. memory Louis L'Amour
73e988a It's all right, Ginny. It's over. It's just a memory. memory J.K. Rowling
049760d And with a relentlessness that comes from the world's depths, with a persistence that strikes the keys metaphysically, the scales of a piano student keep playing over and over, up and down the physical backbone of my memory. It's the old streets with other people, the same streets that today are different; it's dead people speaking to me through the transparency of their absence; it's remorse for what I did or didn't do; it's the rippling of streams in the night, noises from below in the quiet building. I feel like screaming inside my head. I want to stop, to break, to smash this impossible phonograph record that keeps playing inside me, where it doesn't belong, an intangible torturer. I want my soul, a vehicle taken over by others, to let me off and go on without me. I'm going crazy from having to hear. And in the end it is I - in my odiously impressionable brain, in my thin skin, in my hypersensitive nerves - who am the keys played in scales, O horrible and personal piano of our memory. hypersensitivity no-skin despair soul memory Fernando Pessoa
6cafa38 No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea. memory-trigger metafiction self french infinite novel memory nostalgia Marcel Proust
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