Memories Quotes - Page 92

We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends.

I have a hunch that our obsession with photography arises from an unspoken pessimism; it is our nature to believe the good things will not last. . . But photos provide a false sense of security> like our flawed memory, they are guaranteed to fade. . . . We take photographs in order to remember, but it is in the nature of a photograph to forget (pg 157)

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

To recognize that mystery, we must go down deep into ourselves, into that place where the walls of our being are layered with our own memories. Remember that, as in any pool, when we cast one pebble we will see many, many concentric circles. One memory begets another and then another, building into stories.

Relius looked away. "He said that you...cried," he said softly. "But not that he cried as well," said the queen, amused at the memory. "We were very lachrymose... would you like to hear more romance of the evening? He told me the Guard should be reduced by half, and I threw an ink jar at his head." "Is that when he cried?" "He ducked," said Attolia dryly. "I had not pictured you for a fishwife." "Lo, the transforming power of love.

Whether he is aware of it or not, every human being dwells in tradition and history. Human memory is this constant dwelling in tradition. It constitutes that fundamental human characteristic of historicity.

One really ought to be afraid of self-torture. But it tempted me. It begged. The dark place that my mind was fast becoming blends, in my memory, with the dark womb of church: the chant, the fugue of prayer, the strange erotic energy that carving a very small cross into my thigh with a nail had brought.

Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain for the snatches and snippets of what happened, what was said, and when.

I was a B.I.G. fan. I like all of his stuff. I don't really have a favorite song. They all are good, and each brings different memories to me. And you can still listen to it to this day and it means something.

Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.

My memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.

My earliest memory is learning to read 'Muffin the Mule' when I was about three.

It's good to have a short memory because it keeps life fresh.

If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie

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

Our growing addiction to the Internet is impairing precious human capacities such as memory, concentration, pattern recognition, meaning-making, and intimacy. We are becoming more restless, more impatient, more demanding, and more insatiable, even as we become more connected and creative. We are rapidly losing the ability to think long about any- thing, even those issues we care about. We flit, moving restlessly from one link to another.

The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.

But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them. —Ditta

I often remember in this false, distorted way, and the memories are often cloaked in the colour of the sun. Sometimes I feel nostalgia for things I knew I hated when they were happening, for days spent at the beach or the swimming pool with my sisters. When I pick my memories apart, I realise my mind has merely played back the objective ingredients, the clichéd apparatus of happiness, the sun, the sound of splashing water, ice-cream on parched lips and cold fizzy drink on a hot tongue, and laugher too. My memory often peddles on the falsehood of past happiness. I should know this.

They put the thing down your throat so you don't swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That's what was recommended in Rockland State Hospital to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can't read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go right back to page one again.

I have a lot of memories, but I don't go into capitalizing on that. Something's got to be my own. I'm not doing the record to sit here and broadcast my memories of my father.

The problem with memory is that is changes whatever it touches. It is never that accurate. As a result, I end up modifying and revising my own experiences. It's myth making.

The great city is the best organ of memory man has yet created.

When we forgive someone, we do not forget the hurtful act, as if forgetting came along with the forgiveness package, the way strings come with a violin. Begin with the basics. If you forget, you will not forgive at all. You can never forgive people for things you have forgotten about. You need to forgive precisely because you have not forgotten what someone did; your memory keeps the pain alive long after the hurt has stopped. Remembering is the storage of pain. It is why you need to be healed in the first place.