“I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgrass.”
Source: 1990s, Palimpsest : A Memoir (1995), Ch. 12: The Guest of the Blue Nuns, p. 162
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes

“Are you overwhelmed pulling weeds, when you really just need to replant the garden?”
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"The Grave of the Countess Potocki" http://daisy.htmlplanet.com/amick.htm
Crimean Sonnets
Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

“God gave His children memory
That in life's garden there might be
June roses in December.”
Source: from Roses in December, in Songs of Faith and Doubt (1922) https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/roses-december
Introduction
The Life of Poetry (1949)
Context: In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.
Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.
In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness.