MEMORY QUOTES
quotations about memory
You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.
JOHN GREEN
An Abundance of Katherines
Memory believes before knowing remembers.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Light in August
There is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less: and its resultant sum is usually incorrect and false and worthy only of the name of dream.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.
GIORGIO AGAMBEN
Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy
I am a miser of my memories of you
And will not spend them.
When they were anticipations
I spent them
And bought you with them,
But now I have exchanged you for memories,
And I will only pour them from one hand into the other
And back again.
WITTER BYNNER
"I Compute", The Beloved Stranger
Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Glass Menagerie
There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.
HAROLD PINTER
Old Times
I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, July 28, 1940
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
Miss Julie
All the old accumulated rubbish-years which we call memory.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Einstein's Dreams
We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
LEWIS CARROLL
Alice Through the Looking Glass
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Glass Menagerie
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons.
SEAMUS HEANEY
The Underground