MEMORY QUOTES IV

quotations about memory

Memory quote

How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind?

DAN SIMMONS

Endymion

Tags: Dan Simmons


I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately places events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago.

STEFAN ZWEIG

The World of Yesterday

Tags: Stefan Zweig


So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

SARAH DESSEN

Just Listen

Tags: Sarah Dessen


You can't run away from memories, no matter how hard you try.

JOHN SAUL

Midnight Voices

Tags: John Saul


Memory is a distracting process, and what we pull from our brains isn't always entirely accurate.

JAMES MCGAUGH

"The Downside of Having an Almost Perfect Memory", Time, December 8, 2017


Hindsight is of little value in the decision-making process. It distorts our memory for events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a "foregone conclusion." Thus, it may be difficult to learn from our mistakes.

DIANE F. HALPERN

Thought and Knowledge

Tags: Diane F. Halpern


Continents of memory had been lost.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

The Diagnosis

Tags: Alan Lightman


Our memories tell us who we are and they cannot be achieved through committee work, by consulting other people about what happened. That doesn't mean that at all times memories are telling us the absolute truth, but that the main source of who we are is that memory, flawed or not.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Continuum, summer 1998

Tags: Tobias Wolff


As we learn information, there is a slow process that whittles away memories, and it continues whittling them away unless another part of the brain signals the memory is important and overrides it.

RON DAVIS

"To forget or to remember? Memory depends on subtle brain signals", Science Daily, November 22, 2017


Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Deserted Village

Tags: Oliver Goldsmith


Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since.

JOSEPHINE HART

Sin

Tags: Josephine Hart


Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber! who ever sounded the bottom thereof? yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.

MARCEL PROUST

Sodom and Gomorrah

Tags: Marcel Proust


Our memories are card-indexes consulted and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave

Tags: Cyril Connolly


Memory may be but a power of coming to the treasury of Fact,
A momentary self-desertion, an absence in spirit from the now,
An actual coursing hither and thither, by the mind, slipped from its leash,
A life, as in the mystery of dreams, spent within the limits of a moment.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


But I don't remember. I won't remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting.

JULIAN BARNES

Talking It Over

Tags: Julian Barnes


What thousands and millions of recollections there must be in us! And every now and then one of them becomes known to us; and it shows us what spiritual depths are growing in us, what mines of memory.

WILLIAM MOUNTFORD

attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers


Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.

FRANK HERBERT

Heretics of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Marginalia"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe


Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Kafka on the Shore

Tags: Haruki Murakami