“If I forgot what I have not been, I would forget myself.”

“Well, most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid. I vowed that I would never forget.”

“I never forgot that schooling had irretrievably changed my family’s life. That knowledge, however, did not weaken ambition. Instead, it strengthened resolve. Those times I remembered the loss of my past with regret, I quickly reminded myself of all the things my teachers could give me. (They could make me an educated man.) I tightened my grip on pencil and books. I evaded nostalgia. Tried hard to forget. But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers. I remembered too well that education had changed my family’s life. I would not have become a scholarship boy had I not so often remembered.”

“I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.

It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.”

“When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot.”

“As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.”

“What you learn from bad habits and in bad society, you will never forget, and it will be a lasting pang to you. I tell you in all sincerity, not as in the excitement of speech, but as I would confess and have confessed before God, I would give my right hand if I could forget that which I have learned in bad society.”

“I am tipsy after my
own feelings
themselves have become wine.
I forget myself, world and all.”

“I have tried to keep memory alive… I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.”

“That,' I said, 'would be a blessing. There are so many things I'd like to forget I hardly know what would be left standing, if I ever got started.”