Memory Quotes

1. "Memory is the thing you forget with."
Author: Alexander Chase

2. "It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state "I hurt" or " I hate" or " I want". Or indeed, "Look at me". And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, or thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory."
Author: Anita Brookner

3. "It is often advantiageous to forget. Forget your wincing humiliations, forget life's blows, and get on. For blocks in every direction, down every street in the city, people not yet old enough to have lines on their foreheads were laughing away memory, warmly ensconced in shrines of forgetfulness. Those who followed the word of God and those who preferred what the priests called "hoodoo" alike. People everywhere forgetting with drink or forgetting with religion or forgetting with the numbing quality of their many heaps of things. They looked forward and imagined rosy tomorrows, and gave up whatever horrors heckled their dreams, and listened to the pretty stories of whomever ruled their pulpit."
Author: Anna Godbersen

4. "Truman Flynn is a piece of paper in my coat pocket. He is a memory of water and of loss, his hand sliding free from mine, no way to hold on."
Author: Brenna Yovanoff

5. "He was dead; I needed to let his memory go, too. That was the first step for me, before discrimination.Yet my love was the ghost of a young girl's dream. It walked alone in the abyss, stubbornly, where only illusions prospered on tears and regrets. My love had a life of its own; it was perverted but nevertheless still vital. For that reason, I wanted to return to deep space. Honestly, I would have preferred it if we had traveled forever and never stopped at another star system. To fall into endless blackness, that was my new fantasy.The young girl with the ancient dream wept. I could hear her; I even saw her tears on the glass of the observation deck. It made me feel old. I didn't want to know her name. I couldn't forget Tem but I needed to forget her."
Author: Christopher Pike

6. "Only those with no memory insist on their originality."
Author: Coco Chanel

7. "The posters and rock-star buttons and banners were valueless without the perspective of the mind that had attached significance to them. Souvenirs have no worth without nostalgia, after all. They're meaningless if a memory isn't linked to them."
Author: David Morrell

8. "Anything processed by memory is fiction."
Author: David Shields

9. "The smell of her hair lingered just out of reach of his memory and left him with a nervous hum resonating throughout his body like a child forced to sit in church while the sun was shining outside on a perfectly good summer's day."
Author: Erik Tomblin

10. "Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure."
Author: Eudora Welty

11. "The only right memory, is the one that first comes to you."
Author: Franny Billingsley

12. "Dr. Urbino replied without looking at her: "I did not know that fellow was a poet." And then he wiped him from his memory, because among other things, his profession had accustomed him to the ethical management of forgetfulness."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

13. "Sometimes we disfigure ourselves by what we think about ourselves rather than by what we do to ourselves. Some people have been disfigured emotionally because of what others did to them when they were children. Sometimes our memory banks become warehouses of beliefs and feelings that cripple our progress."
Author: H. Norman Wright

14. "But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity."
Author: Henri Bergson

15. "I think that we are already making steps toward mapping out the brain so we can identify the chemical patterns that create and store memory."
Author: J. Michael Straczynski

16. "Great engines crawled across the field; and in the midst was a huge ram, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet in length, swinging on mighty chains. Long had it been forging in the dark smithies of Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in the likeness of a ravening wolf; on it spells of ruin lay. Grond they named it, in memory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old. Great beasts drew it, orcs surrounded it, and behind walked mountain-trolls to wield it."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

17. "The fragrance that came to each was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

18. "Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy."
Author: James Joyce

19. "Mostly what you lose with time, in memory, is the specificity of things, their exact sequence. It all runs together, becomes a watery soup. Portmanteau days, imploded years. Like a bad actor, memory always goes for effect, abjuring motivation, consistency, good sense."
Author: James Sallis

20. "Fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself. There is fear of what happened yesterday in relation to the possibility of its repetition tomorrow; there is always a fixed point from which relationship takes place. How does fear come into this? I had pain yesterday; there is the memory of it and I do not want it again tomorrow. Thinking about the pain of yesterday, thinking which involves the memory of yesterday's pain, projects the fear of having pain again tomorrow. So it is thought that brings about fear. Thought breeds fear; thought also cultivates pleasure. To understand fear you must also understand pleasure – they are interrelated; without understanding one you cannot understand the other. This means that one cannot say ‘I must only have pleasure and no fear'; fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure."
Author: Jiddu Krishnamurti

21. "And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it - perhaps your favourite sentence - to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears."
Author: John Irving

22. "On its outer surface time is vulnerable to transience. Regardless of its sadness or beauty, each day empties and vanishes. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration. Time minds possibility and makes sure that nothing is lost or forgotten. That which seems to pass away on the surface of time is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory."
Author: John O'Donohue

23. "The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory."
Author: Jonathan Lethem

24. "Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human."
Author: Joshua Foer

25. "She should have been relieved that she did not do something she was sure to regret. But she wasn't. She wanted her regrets. She wanted them desperately. She wanted to do something she knew she should not, and she wanted to lie in bed at night letting the memory keep her warm."
Author: Julia Quinn

26. "Their world will eat at you," Mab said. "Strip you away bit by bit. Cut off from the Nevernever, you will not survive. Whether it takes one mortal year or a thousand, you will gradually fade away, until you simply cease to exist." Mab stepped closer, pointing at me with the scepter. "She will die, Ash. She is only human. She will grow old, wither and die, and her soul will flee to a place you cannot follow. And then, you will be left to wander the mortal world alone, until you yourself are only a memory.And after that-" the queen opened her empty fist "-nothing. Forever."
Author: Julie Kagawa

27. "Is it ghosts that truly haunt us, or the memory of our own mistakes that we wish we could undo?"
Author: Laura Lam

28. "Then the memory of the Darkling's kiss blew through me and rattled my concentration, scattering my thoughts like leaves and making my heart swoop and dive like a bird borne aloft by uncertain currents."
Author: Leigh Bardugo

29. "One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though."
Author: Luigi Pirandello

30. "Imperfect knowledge, incomplete assessment of feedback, limited memory and recall, as well as poor problem-solving skills result in a form of rationality that attains not optimal decisions but more or less satisfactory compromises between conflicting constraints."
Author: Manuel De Landa

31. "The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time."
Author: Marcus Aurelius

32. "How easy it is to create ghosts, he thinks as he begins to die a minute later, feeling his mind closing chamber by chamber, the memory of Naheed contained in each one. And despite it all it means much to have been loved. Just before the world vanishes, a hope surfaces in him that this wasn't necessarily everything, that he will return somehow.His arm rises, remembering when it used to be a wing."
Author: Nadeem Aslam

33. "Bruce is still my friend. We don't talk much. We don't have to. He is great and in his own league. I'm not him and he is not me. But we are on similar paths, writing and singing out own kind of songs around the world, along with Bob and a few other singer/songwriters. It is a a silent fraternity of sorts, occupying this space in people's souls with our music. Last year, I lost my right-hand man, the pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith. This year Bruce lost his right-hand man, the saxophonist Clarence Clemons. It's time for another talk; friends can help each other just by being there. Now both of us will look to our right and see a giant hole, a memory, the past and the future. I won't play with another steel player trying to recreate Ben's parts, and I know Bruce won't play with another sax man trying to play Clarence's. Those parts are not going to happen again. They already did. That takes a lot out of our repertoires."
Author: Neil Young

34. "If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future."
Author: Orison Swett Marden

35. "It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it."
Author: Oscar Wilde

36. "His prime resource is the leaky vessel of is own memory. At times he views it thus, quite literally- as some old pail with holes and rusted seams. Alternatively, he imagines an extensive manuscript of which there survive only a handful of charred fragments; it is like trying to piece together the Gospels from the Dead Sea Scrolls...."
Author: Penelope Lively

37. "The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings.-Henri"
Author: Pittacus Lore

38. "I turned to face Audrey, and everything I loved was right there in her eyes, the memories tangible: the schooldays and sleepovers, the cheap bottles of wine and sappy chick flicks. She was there for my mother's drunken relapses, there to hold me until I fell asleep the first time the ex from Seattle hit me. It was all there, and my God, each memory was suddenly sacred and the sun rose and set upon it."
Author: Rachael Wade

39. "Now we wake up with our memoryand fix our gazes on that which was;whispering sweetness, which once coursed through us,sits silently beside us with loosened hair"
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

40. "No man surely has so short a memory as the American."
Author: Rebecca Harding Davis

41. "I told you I try not to live in the past and nothing could change the fact that my mum was gone. But I'm a liar. The truth was, I'd had one dream ever since I was six: to see my mum again. To actually get to know her, talk to her, go shopping, do anything. Just be with her once so I could have a better memory to hold on to."
Author: Rick Riordan

42. "I started picturing Rens smiling face, the warmth of his touch, the slight curl of his lip before he kissed me. Every happy memory came rushing back through the blackness illuminating it in brilliant color."
Author: S.G. Holster

43. "Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words."
Author: Siri Hustvedt

44. "Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious."
Author: Siri Hustvedt

45. "A person's memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It's you."
Author: Stephen King

46. "In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers."
Author: Téa Obreht

47. "Did we...?" I cocked my head to the side as I scanned my memory. It would be impossible to forget someone like Lily. the feel of her skin would not leave my thoughts that easily."No!" She sounded insulted that I would even think that we had slept together. It was kind of cute. Someone with her innocent demeanor shouldn't be flirting with a man like me."
Author: Teresa Mummert

48. "The bullet is already in the brain; it won't be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it willdo its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet's tail of memory and hope andtalent and love into the marble hall of commerce."
Author: Tobias Wolff

49. "I don't know if it's harder but when you're playing a real person you want to honor their memory - even if they're a criminal or someone that the public loathed. That can be challenging."
Author: Toby Jones

50. "Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga."
Author: William Knowlton Zinsser

Memory Quotes Pictures