Quotes about memories

page 5

“I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.”

“I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.”

“Gone is not forgotten, but our lives cannot be a memorial. This city cannot be a memorial. This city has to be a city. Our lives have to be our lives.”

“She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.”

“… I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them…”

“In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?”

“See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it”

“… as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.”

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”

“We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

“The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.”

“… [T]here should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”

“Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory.”

“Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.”

“Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

“Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.”

“Like tired dogs they stand there,
because they use up all their strength
in remaining upright in one's memory.”

“I can't believe you married a justice nymph and have yet to learn anything from her. There are always three sides to every memory, Z. Yours, theirs, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between the two. (Acheron)”

“What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.”

“An artisan without memories, whose only dream was to die of fatigue in the oblivion and misery of his little gold fishes.”

“Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.”

“Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.”

“a dream is only a memory of the future”

“People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don't acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.”

“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”

“Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always.”

“The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.”

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

“Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (…) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.”

“Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain for the snatches and snippets of what happened, what was said, and when.”

“Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.”

“You will soon discover that in matters of the heart, memories are much kinder than reality”

“This is what a memorial is: standing still, staring at something that isn’t ther”

“… this time I didn't launch into my usual tirade. Was it a memory of Krishna, the cool silence with which he countered disagreement, that stopped me? I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy.”

“Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory.”

“I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst.”

“The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken.”

“What business does memory have with time?”

“We become imprisoned by our memories, and that makes our lives wretched.”

“A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.”

“I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become.”

“One must have a good memory to keep the promises one has made.”

“I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end-they'd reach forever.”

“Is it fair to have given us the memory of what was and the desire of what could be when we must suffer what is?”

“Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)”

“I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories.”

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”

“Please!’
That word didn’t make sense to Nico. The Underworld had no mercy. It only had justice.
‘You’re already dead,’ Nico said. ‘You’re a ghost with no tongue, no memory. You won’t be sharing any secrets.”

“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”

“The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

“That memory made a lump form in my throat as I remembered his face, serious and gorgeous, those brown eyes intense and passionate as he spoke up for me and convinced the others of my value.”

“We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.”

“Conditions of thought, memory, and desire, persuaded by impulse and irrationality, are influenced as well by personal aesthetics and private meanings.”

“Memories are links in a golden chain that bind us until we meet again.”

“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.”

“There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.”

“Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

“I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?”

“He remembered Tessa telling him that Hell was cold, and he fought back the odd urge to smile at the memory. They'd been running for their lives, she ought to have been terrified, and there she had been, telling him about thein precise American tones.”

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”

“There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.”

“You couldnt erase everything that caused you pain with recollection. Every memory was valuable; even the bad ones”

“There's no way to release yourself from a memory. It ends when it wants to end, whether it's in a flash or long after you've begged it to stop.”

“A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.”

“Living Memory
I carry you with me into the world,
into the smell of rain
& the words that dance between people
& for me, it will always be this way,
walking in the light,
remembering being alive together”

“How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.”

“I offer images-I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached-like the Doors, right? But we can only open the doors-we can't drag people through.”

“America was different. America was a river, roarng along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.”

“He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.”

“The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.”

“Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.”

“There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.”

“I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.”

“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.”

“Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.”

“And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.”

“When our memories outweigh our dreams, it is then that we become old.”

“My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.”

“A scattered dream that's like a far-off memory… a far-off memory that's like a scattered dream… i want to line the pieces up… yours and mine.”

“We couldn't understand because we were too far… and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign… and no memories.”

“Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting?”

“Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.”

“One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.”

“Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.”

“Tell me of a happy memory, Zarek. One thing in your life that was good. (Astrid)
You. (Zarek)”

“Every man's memory is his private literature.”

“The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”

“I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.”

“And then there is our personal history. Memories only we share. Things not another living soul would understand.”

“The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts.”

“No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.”

“Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.”

“There are men you build a future with, Dani. And then there are men that you know, going in, that you're only making a memory with. I know the difference
.. Some memories are worth the price. I'll deal with it.”

“Memories should console, not enslave.”

“My most salient memories”

“the best kind of laughter is laughter born of a shared memory.”

“Every memory was valuable; even the bad ones.”