“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.”

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

“All the things that happen and seem so important at the time, and yet you forget them, one after another.”

“If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.”

“Hope is love's happiness, but not its life;—
How many hearts have nourished a vain flame
In silence and in secret, though they knew
They fed the scorching fire that would consume them!”

“Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart's yearning.”

“Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.”

“In this winter night, long and ample for bitter memories, many a widow who lost her husband in the war and is now left alone will press her palms to her ageing face; and in the nocturnal darkness the burning tears, as bitter as wormwood, will scorch her fingers.”

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”