“Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember……”

—  Klaus Mann

Source: The Turning Point

Last update Sept. 5, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscence…" by Klaus Mann?
Klaus Mann photo
Klaus Mann2
German writer 1906–1949

Related quotes

Walter Benjamin photo

“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. … For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form — it may be called fleeting or eternal — is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

A Berlin Chronicle (1932–, unfinished), in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings – vol. 2, pt. 2: 1931-1934, ed. Michael William Jennings, Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 612

Cormac McCarthy photo

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Edith Windsor photo

“We told ourselves that it didn’t matter if there was no word to cement our reality…We were the ones that made it real. And yet, the sense of otherness loomed.”

Edith Windsor (1929–2017) American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM

On wanting to legitimize her relationship (as quoted in “Gay rights icon Edie Windsor’s sheer force carries ‘A Wild and Precious Life’” https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/arts/books/2019/10/08/gay-rights-icon-edie-windsors-sheer-force-carries-a-wild-and-precious-life/) (Tampa Bay; 2019 Oct 8)

Jane Roberts photo

“You must remember, once more, that expectations are the blocks with which you build your reality. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 485, Page 308
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 9

Orson Scott Card photo

“The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Bram Stoker photo

“Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Neale Donald Walsch photo

“Group consciousness is something that is not widely understood, yet it is extremely powerful and can, if you are not careful, often overcome individual consciousness. If you cannot find a group whose consciousness matches your own, be the source of one. Others of like consciousness will be drawn to you.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

John Dryden photo

“Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Lines 1–2.

Paul Sophus Epstein photo

“To have a good memory the first thing you have to do is to trust your memory.”

Paul Sophus Epstein (1883–1966) Russian-American mathematician

Jesse W. M. DuMond, Paul Sophus Epstein http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=568&page=147, in Biographical Memoirs V.45, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), published by National Academies Press (1974), ISBN 0-309-02239-8, p. 140

Elvis Presley photo

“The way she held your hand,
The little things you planned.
Her memory is with you yet,
That's someone you'll never forget.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

That's Someone You Never Forget, from Pot Luck, written by Elvis Presley and Red West (1961)
Song lyrics

Related topics