Memory Wall Quotes

ANTHONY DOERR is the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes both in the United States and overseas, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Raised in Cleveland, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons. ~ Anthony Doerr

It is the rarest thing ... that gets preserved, that does not get erased, broken down, transformed. ~ Anthony Doerr

Shrago stayed on his feet for a long second, and then his knees got the message that the lights were out upstairs, and he went down in a vertical heap, like he had jumped off a wall. ~ Lee Child

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me. I have many places where I sit and think, "I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again." Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath, in 1962 or 1983, or many other times. Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometimes Chaz will say she's going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room and reading in bed. "Why don't you go and touch your bases?" she'll ask me. I know she sympathizes. These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves. ~ Roger Ebert

I am in love with everything around me,
the dotted white lines moving
across my teacher's blackboard, the smell of chalk, the flag jutting out from the wall and slowly swaying above.
There is nothing more beautiful that P.S. 106.
Nothing more perfect than my first-grade classroom.
No one more kind than Ms. Feilder, who meets me at the door each morning,
takes my hand from my sister's, smiles down and says,
Now that Jacqueline is here, the day can begin.
And I believe her.
Yes, I truly believe her. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Vanish.
Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her.
Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes.
Go back into the blue.
I myself placed her ashes in the wall.
I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six.
I know what it is I am now experiencing.
I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her. ~ Joan Didion

I want my life to be about LIVING, not leaving
which is why I'm LEAVING nothing behind. ~ Shelley K. Wall

What you see is not what wee se. What you see is distracted by memory, by being who you are, all this time, for all these years. ~ Don DeLillo

When your back is against the wall, you will find it is a good place to push off. ~ Jeffrey Fry

Hurling the box released some of his anger. It felt good so he swept his arm across the top of his dresser, knocking his pitiful possessions onto the floor, the ridiculous little carved animals, pathetic toiletries and useless old catalog he could never afford to order
from. These paltry items were the sum of his entire dismal life.
He kicked the frame of his bed, hurting his foot and knocking the light cot away
from the wall. Heedless of Rasmussen hearing the noise, he cried out his rage and frustration, tore the covers off the bed, picked up the pillow and punched it. He hurled it across the room. Dragging the thin mattress from the metal mesh of the cot, he tossed it
on the floor and looked around, but there was nothing else to tear apart since he owned so little. Laughing at the irony, he sank onto the mattress on the floor, his legs drawn to his
chest, forehead bowed to his knees, and his hands cradling the back of his neck.
Caught between harsh laughter and sobs, he breathed in hitching bursts.
He had no future, definitely no girl, and soon, no home. What the hell was he going to do? ~ Bonnie Dee

But he has still a vague memory that he was a human once, ~ J.M. Barrie

I'm the guy who's going to take you up against this wall. I'm going to bury my cock in you and own your body and you're going to love it. But I'm not going to hurt you. Ever. ~ Ilsa Madden-Mills

It's not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they're mine.
Which lends way to believe, that none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We're not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own. ~ Shane Koyczan

He had understood that memory was a place, a real place that one could visit, and that to spend a few moments among the dead was not necessarily bad for you, that it could in fact be a source of great comfort and happiness. ~ Paul Auster

The castle will seem very quiet and strange without you here. The stone stairs and the chapel will miss your footstep, the gateway will will miss your laughter, and the wall will miss your shadow. ~ Philippa Gregory

What I cannot touch, remains a memory. I am blinded by an imagined light. A remembrance of what can never be. ~ Ayushee Ghoshal

The hell with your secrets," shouted Bonnie.
"Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret all
their life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer - and I am
not speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anything like that. And
then there is the question of the true identity of Sage - good luck on your
research there!One of you has already had their memory erased - and I don't mean
Damon or Stefan. And what about the secret, stolen kiss? And then there is
the question of what happened the night of the motel, that it seems that nobody
but Elena can recall. You might ask her sometime about her theories about
Camelot. ~ L.J.Smith

Dark embers smolder inside me - one touch and they flare - who would have thought memory combustible, or near you bright sparks appear? ... ~ John Geddes

You can teach to a wall, but when you help someone learn, you have to get involved with the whole person. ~ Guy Doud

There are events in one's life which, no matter how remote, never fade from memory ~ Jim Corbett

A fragrance that matches the personality of the man or woman who wears it is an integral part of the memory that you have of him or her. It goes without saying that it's a formidable weapon of seduction. ~ Dree Hemingway

If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth... for understanding. Too often, we assume that the light on the wall is God, but the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it. Similarly, someone who does not search - who does not bring a lantern - sees nothing. What we perceive as God is the by-product of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light... pure and unblemished... not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe - God looks astonishingly like we do - or we turn to look at our shadow and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose, which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty and in all its flaws; and in so doing, better understand the world around us. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

Cole envisioned the next few weeks passing as a sort of painless montage: there'd be music, and different moments of the townspeople hard at work building a defensive wall around the perimeter of the town, and digging holes to serve as traps, and training with the few weapons they had. There'd be a wiping of perspiration and drinks raised to one another and the exchange of friendly smiles between comrades, and perhaps deeper, more meaningful glances between him and MaryAnn.

But by midmorning of the first day, Cole had come to the unavoidable conclusion that the remainder of the experience would in fact drag on in exceedingly real time, with lots of heaving and hoing and digging and hauling under the hot sun, full of the kind of intense straining that raised the danger of a really spectacular hernia. And, judging from the few tense conversations he'd had so far, he foresaw a series of increasingly strident arguments with Nora regarding matters strategic. Plus, of course, at the end of all this effort they'd all probably be dead. ~ Michael Rubens

It had had a fragrant element, reminding him of a regular childhood experience, a memory that reverberated like the chimes of a prayer bell inside his head. For a few moments, he pictured the old Orthodox church that had dominated his remote Russian village. The bearded priest was swinging the elaborate incense-burner, suspended from gold-plated chains. It had been the same odour. Hadn't it? He blinked, shook his head. He couldn't make sense of that.
He decided, with an odd lack of enthusiasm, that he'd imagined it. The effects of the war played tricks of the mind, of the senses. Looking over his shoulder, he counted all seven of his men as they emerged from the remnants of the four-storey civic office building.
A few muddied documents were scattered on the ground, stamped with the official Nazi Party eagle, its head turned to the left, and an emblem he failed to recognize, but which looked to him like a decorative wheel, with a geometrical design of squares at its centre. Even a blackened flag had survived the bomb damage. Hanging beneath a crumbling windowsill, the swastika flapped against the bullet-ridden façade, the movement both panicky and defiant, Pavel thought.
His men were conscripts. A few still wore their padded khaki jackets and mustard-yellow blouses. Most, their green field tunics and forage caps. All the clothing was lice-ridden and smeared with soft ash. Months of exposure to frozen winds had darkened their skins and narrowed their eyes. They'd ~ Gary Haynes

Just as he lived with them alive, he will live with them dead. Someday he will accept their death as part of his life. He will weep no more. He will carry them in his memory and his thoughts. His flesh and blood are part of them. So long as he is alive, they, too, will live in him. The big wave came, but it went away. The sun shines again, birds sing, and earth flowers. ~ Pearl S. Buck

Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory ... ~ Jan Struther

Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something else ... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering today. This place is dear to me already. I have already two or three such places in Petersburg. I once shed tears over memories ... like you ... Who knows, perhaps you were weeping ten minutes ago over some memory ... But, forgive me, I have forgotten myself again; perhaps you have once been particularly happy here ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He'd been inside of a storm, all right. He'd been swept up in a tornado of sex and memory, naked regret and short-lived ecstasy. Now he felt tossed out of it onto the hard, prickly ground. He felt bruised and used. ~ Nancy Pickard

A man sitting still is alone, often, with the memory of all he doesn't have. And what he does have can look very much like nothing. ~ Pico Iyer

Everyone is a recording to everyone else, a memory, a past transcript embedded in air or water or sound or light. No matter how close they are, they are not here. What they said, when they said it, it is not now. ~ Charles Yu

North is a powerful man, and you're still connected to him." Flo frowned. "Probably sexual memory, those Capricorns are insatiable. Well, you know. Sea Goat. And of course, you're a Fish. You'll end up back in bed with him."
Andie slammed the car door. "You know what I'd like for Christmas, Flo? Boundaries. You can gift me early if you'd like. ~ Jennifer Crusie

You think you have a memory; but it has you! Later, ~ John Irving

It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed. ~ George VI

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

Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr. Malfoy. And then, your father did something Snape could never forgive." "What?" "He saved his life." "What?" "Yes . . ." said Dumbledore dreamily. "Funny, the way people's minds work, isn't it? Professor Snape couldn't bear being in your father's debt. . . . I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father's memory in peace. . ~ J.K. Rowling