“The more you try to describe a dream the further it eludes your grasp, retreating before the advance of the words, growing cooler and cooler and paler and paler, until, when you have recorded it all, there is nothing of what it was really like left in your memory.”
The Tin Men (London: Collins, 1965) p. 59.
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Michael Frayn 5
British writer 1933Related quotes

According to The Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/17/butterfly/, "the earliest instance of this saying was crafted by the enigmatic “L” for “The Daily Crescent” newspaper in New Orleans [in June 1848]. ... The linkage to Henry David Thoreau is unsupported."
Misattributed

“Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you.”
Bookends
Song lyrics, Bookends (1968)