|
bae2802
|
He would come to feel that history, even more than memory, distorts the present of the past by focusing on big events and making one forget that most people living in the present are otherwise preoccupied, that for them omens often don't exist.
|
|
memory
|
Tracy Kidder |
|
101d60c
|
When he looked back at the menu as an old man, it brought back everything; the food, the wine, the private dining room, the pride he took in being able to pay for such a dinner, the convergence of his life as a writer and his life as an oenophile, the conviviality that grew as the night continued and everyone had a little too much to drink but not enough to impair the quality of the conversation, some of which, I feel sure, was about the wines themselves.
|
|
food
memory
wine
|
Anne Fadiman |
|
ecb60b7
|
Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped.
|
|
memory
|
Jane Hamilton |
|
0fd4132
|
Laurie thought the task of forgetting his love for Jo would absorb all his powers for years; but, to his surprise, he discovered it grew easier every day. He refused to believe it at first,--got angry with himself, and couldn't understand it; but these hearts of ours are curious and contrary things, and time and nature work their will in spite of us. Laurie's heart wouldn't ache; the wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and, instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember.
|
|
memory
|
Louisa May Alcott |
|
ce59c1f
|
It is only a metaphor--or the worst of dreams; yet there are metaphors which sit more powerfully in the brain than remembered events.
|
|
julian-barnes
memory
metaphor
reality
the-only-story
|
Julian Barnes |
|
86b4123
|
She has only a ghostplay on some frayed screen of memory, which she takes to be the present.
|
|
memory
memory-loss
the-only-story
|
Julian Barnes |
|
91cb66a
|
I have forgotten more of my life than I remember, and with my forgetting I have lost my being.
|
|
memory
|
Russell Hoban |
|
cadfc5e
|
Cultele memoriei de orice natura, indiferent daca se prezinta in vesminte religioase, civilizatoare sau politice, trebuie privite... cu neincredere si asta fara exceptie: sub pretextul unei comemorari purificatoare, eliberatoare sau fie si numai fondatoare de identitate, ele dau inevitabil apa la moara unei tendinte ascunse de repetare si repunere in scena. ... masurile de stingere sau de domolire a flacarii mocnite cu care ard amintirile suferintelor trebuie sa faca parte din regulile de intelepciune ale oricarei civilizatii,
|
|
civilizations
memorie
memory
|
Peter Sloterdijk |
|
d0a4d51
|
Everyone remembers things which never happened. And it is common knowledge that people often forget things which did. Either we are all fantasists and liars or the past has nothing definite in it.
|
|
lies
memory
reality
truth
|
Jeanette Winterson |
|
1d12a8d
|
I am forty. [...] I know who I am. The treachery of possibilities that threaten to swamp a young guy -- I negotiated them. I'm on the other side. The safe side. Why then do I remember the perilous moments with such fond affection?
|
|
identity
memory
nostalgia
youth
|
Gregory Maguire |
|
d13e896
|
"What had Old Joe Hunt answered when I knowingly claimed that history was the lies of the victors? "As long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated." Do we remember that enough when it comes to our private lives?"
|
|
life
memories
memory
time
|
Julian Barnes |
|
d3486c7
|
So (and this would have happened earlier, but I am only remembering it now): I am visiting her one afternoon.
|
|
memory
nonlinear
storytelling
the-only-story
|
Julian Barnes |
|
9fcbed2
|
If some mystical clarity of thought came when you looked death in the eye, then I knew Morrie wanted to share it. And I wanted to remember it for as long as I could.
|
|
death
dying
ill
memory
remember
share
thought
time
|
Mitch Albom |
|
068ac97
|
The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960's of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother's hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father's denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her.
|
|
arents
canada
coal
coal-mine
dancing
darkroom
kodachrome
memory
nostalgia
photography
poverty
print
retro
|
Rebecca McNutt |
|
1997e0c
|
I haunted and interrogated the past even as it interrogated me. London, Skinner's Lane, Brook Street, the Sudan - how had we passed all that time? Why did we not burn up every moment of it, as we would if we could have it all again? The journey back to England surfaced in dreams and occupied my days, the train to Wadi Halfa panting across the desert, reading old newspapers in the white, shuttered carriages while Taha, alas, was obliged to travel with the guard; and the stops, which had no names, but only a number, painted on a little shelter beside the track; and the steamer to the first Cateract and the visionary beauty of Aswan.
|
|
loss
memory
|
Alan Hollinghurst |
|
6a2a081
|
But of course, in one sense, Dean never died - his existence is superior to such accidents. One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back. But they are mortal, these heroes, just as we are. They do not last forever. They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten - one hears of them no more.
|
|
hero
memory
remeberance
role-model
time
|
James Salter |
|
2f2a032
|
The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.
|
|
history
introspection
memory
past
present
reflection
time
|
Iris Murdoch |
|
27bdd9a
|
This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.
|
|
memory
the-sense-of-an-ending
|
Julian Barnes |
|
9d24bc1
|
Perhaps this is how it is--life flowing smoothly over memory and history, the past returning or not, depending on the tide. History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities, surface towards us, then sink away. Some we hook out, others we ignore, and as the pattern changes, so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time, which returns everything, changes everything.
|
|
history
life
meaning
memory
objectivity
subjectivity
time
|
Jeanette Winterson |