Memory Quotes
Many people believe that memory works like a recording device. You just record the information, then you call it up and play it back when you want to answer questions or identify images. But decades of work in psychology has shown that this just isn't true. Our memories are constructive. They're reconstructive. Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.
Elizabeth Loftus
I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
No one's memory is infallible, of course - quite the opposite.
Sigrid Nunez
Each, in its own way, was unforgettable. It would be difficult to - Rome! By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.
Audrey Hepburn
I shall go the way of the open sea,
To the lands I knew before you came,
And the cool ocean breezes shall blow from me
The memory of your name.
Adela Florence Nicolson
Dissociation prevents the trauma from becoming integrated within the conglomerated, ever-shifting stores of autobiographical memory, in essence creating a dual memory system. Normal memory integrates the elements of each experience into the continuous flow of self-experience by a complex process of association; think of a dense but flexible network where each element exerts a subtle influence on many others. But in Julian’s case, the sensations, thoughts, and emotions of the trauma were stored separately as frozen, barely comprehensible fragments.
Bessel van der Kolk
In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.
Jules Verne
Memory only becomes interesting through its struggle with forgetfulness.
Adrian Forty
I feel like I've had a lot of painful situations that I intentionally delete from my memory.
Nancy Wilson
Heart
It's funny what memory does, isn't it? My favorite holiday tradition might not have happened more than once or twice. But because it is such a good memory, so encapsulating of everything I love about the holidays, in my mind it happened every year. Without fail.
Molly O'Keefe
I had no business trying to see you leave, see death arrive, I owe you an apology, an elegy, I owe you the drift of memory, the praise of everything, of saying it was the best decision of my life, to hold you full, hold you empty, & live as the only bond between the two.
Bob Hicok
There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.
Marcel Proust
Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention.
Alain Robbe-Grillet
There was a train that would come by our house every night, and I'd hear the whistle blow. That is the sweetest memory I have.
Cassandra Wilson
The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.
Marcel Proust
What if life after death is all based within memory: you die, and you don't ascend on a bed of clouds to Jesus, but your brain has a terrain that it can use to propel itself further. It's more of a theoretical afterlife. If that's true, all of these theoretical afterlives of people could potentially interact or network. That space seems way more powerful and exciting than reality. This potential boundlessness is more of what god is to me.
Blake Butler
The beautiful thing about CBGB is that I don't have a single memory from that place, ... But I think it was amazing.
Dave Navarro
Jane's Addiction
Practicing mindfulness calms down the sympathetic nervous system, so that you are less likely to be thrown into fight-or-flight.11 Learning to observe and tolerate your physical reactions is a prerequisite for safely revisiting the past. If you cannot tolerate what you are feeling right now, opening up the past will only compound the misery and retraumatize you further.12 We can tolerate a great deal of discomfort as long as we stay conscious of the fact that the body’s commotions constantly shift. One moment your chest tightens, but after you take a deep breath and exhale, that feeling softens and you may observe something else, perhaps a tension in your shoulder. Now you can start exploring what happens when you take a deeper breath and notice how your rib cage expands.13 Once you feel calmer and more curious, you can go back to that sensation in your shoulder. You should not be surprised if a memory spontaneously arises in which that shoulder was somehow involved.
Bessel van der Kolk
