Quotes about memorial
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“The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what I’m left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that I can’t quite remember.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Learning, Memory

“Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”

Joseph Conrad book Under Western Eyes

Pt. I, ch. 2
Under Western Eyes (1911)

Memory, Loneliness

“Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Source: Out of Place

Feeling, Memory, Hurt

“Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free?”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Love, Memory

“And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.”

Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife

Source: The Kitchen God's Wife

Happiness, Sadness, Way, Feeling

“Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless …”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
Context: Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless... Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.

Soul, Learning, Memory

“Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Memory

“Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Art, Memory

“To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that’s a trophy enough for a guy’s ego, huh?”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Guy, Girl, Memory

“What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness?”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Happiness, Memory

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

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

Thinking, Memory

“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.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Life, Home, Memory, Past

“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.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

Memory

“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.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Death, Memory, Parting

“… 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…”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Memory

“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?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Memory

“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”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

World, Memory

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

Marguerite Duras book Blue Eyes, Black Hair

Source: Blue Eyes, Black Hair

Memory

“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.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

(15 January 1990)

Age, Birth, Memory, Time

“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.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love, Fear, Hope, Memory

“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.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Love, Truth, Lie, Spring

“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.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from Tiny Surrealism: Salvador Dalí and the Aesthetics of the Small, Roger Rothman, 2012 UNP-Nebraska.
Quotes of Salvador Dali, Miscellaneous

Memory, Falseness

“… [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.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Imagination, Sense, Memory, Dance

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

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Imagination, Memory

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

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Kill the Dead

Tear, Memory

“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.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Memory, Forgetting

“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.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
Context: As I trace the route to his apartment, the twists and turns, and pass once more the old tree opposite his house, I am struck by a sudden thought: 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.

Love, Way, Reality, Memory