Memory Quotes

Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.

Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't.

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

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.

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes

I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.'
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

Katniss. I remember about the bread.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

Touch has a memory.

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.

You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always

You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
From an Irish headstone

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.

I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.

What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings.

In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.

Scars are just another kind of memory.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not.

The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.

The one charm about the past is that it is the past.

Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.

Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker