The Memory Book Quotes

I don't know, Mom. Now that I'm about to graduate, I plan on being more spontaneous."
Mom opened her eyes and burst out laughing.
I said, "Got spontaneity on the calendar for next Tuesday. ~ Lara Avery

I picked up a book called Anagrams and started to read. I felt someone's eyes on me and looked up. Stuart. I held up the book like someone would hold up a glass. Cheers. Parties, right? Ha-ha. It's that I don't know what to do or say it's just that I've been to so many parties that I'm tired of them and would rather read this book ha-ha so don't worry about me I'll just be here. ~ Lara Avery

For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live. ~ George Orwell

By dying young, a man stays young forever in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his light shines for all time. In his musings during the past few weeks Vadim had discovered an important and at first glance paradoxical point: a man of talent can understand and accept death more easily than a man with none - yet the former has more to lose. A man of no talent craves long life, yet Epicurus had once observed that a fool, if offered eternity, would not know what to do with it. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

the currency of the future will be memory ~ Dean Cavanagh

Memory has a spottiness, as if the film was sprinkled with developer instead of immersed in it. ~ John Updike

My co-winners, Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides, and I wish to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation for this very great honor. We each feel privileged and humbled to be named the winners of the 2010 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ~ Dale T. Mortensen

She was making the case that we should resist on principle, even though it might be futile. I had just begun trying to make the case for hope in writing, and I argued that you don't know if your actions are futile; that you don't have the memory of the future; that the future is indeed dark, which is the best thing it could be; and that, in the end, we always act in the dark. The effects of your actions may unfold in ways you cannot foresee or even imagine. They may unfold long after your death. That is when the words of so many writers often resonate most. ~ Rebecca Solnit

No sooner does an approaching hour become the present for us than it sheds all its charms, only to regain them, it is true, on the roads of memory, when we have left that hour far behind us, and so long as our soul is vast enough to disclose deep perspectives. ~ Marcel Proust

And all love that had overtaken her would have to be a memory, a truck on the interstate roaring up from the left, a thing she must let pass. ~ Lorrie Moore

At 11, I went to Misha's school for two summers. So when I wasn't in that school, I was taking classes at David Howard or Robert Denver's studios - kind of legendary places - and there was one summer where Alexander Godunov sort of took me under his wing; the memory's a little murky, but I felt as if I was his project for those weeks. ~ Sascha Radetsky

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness. ~ Meg Wolitzer

The selective memory isn't selective enough. ~ Blake Morrison

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don't see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this. ~ Lemony Snicket

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory. ~ Horace

My definition of forgiveness is a sigh, very like a sigh of relief, on which the memory of evil is breathed out.
With letting go of the memory, discontinuing the incessant replaying of pain, and instead feeling the unmitigated overness of the evil, the evildoer often looks quite different: flawed, like me, a child of God, like me. Forgiven, like me. ~ Nevada Barr

A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. ~ Thomas De Quincey

He believes in bad choices; he believes in bad luck. And yet the memory of the woman on Hester Street is like a miniscule needle in his stomach, something he swallowed long ago and which floats, undetectable, except for moments when he moves a certain way and feels a prick. ~ Chloe Benjamin

When in the wondrous realms above Our Saviour had been called upon, To save our world of sin by love, He said, "Thy will, O Lord, be done.' The Kings of kings left worlds of light, Became the meek and lowly one; In brightest day or darkest night He said, "Thy will, O Lord, be done." No crown of thorns, no cruel cross Could make our great Redeemer shun. He counted his own will but loss, And said, "Thy will, O Lord, be done." We take the bread and cup this day, In memory of the Sinless One, And pray for strength, That we may say, As he, "Thy will, O Lord, be done." ~ Frank I. Kooyman

Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship's more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments. ~ Truman Capote

It was the only time the heavy panic set in, panic that she would never leave, never get to go home. She would be forgotten here, wearing the same pale clothes as everyone else, blending in with the patients and the nurses and the walls, and her family would be outside in the world and she would bleed away like a memory, like a colorful shirt washed too many times. ~ V.E Schwab

The fear of forgetting anything precious can trigger in us the wish to raise a structure, like a paperweight to hold down our memories. We might even follow the example of the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, who in the late eighteenth century had a thirty-foot-high Neoclassical obelisk erected on a hill on the outskirts of Plymouth, in memory of an unusually sensitive pig called Cupid, whom she did not hesitate to call a true friend. ~ Alain De Botton

That wasn't a true dream, but an ancient organic memory millions of years old. The innate releasing mechanisms laid down in your cytoplasm have been awakened. The expanding sun and rising temperatures are driving you back down to the spinal levels into the drowned seas of the lowest layers of your unconscious, into the entirely new zone of the neuronic psyche. This is the lumbar transfer, total psychic recall. We really remember these swamps and lagoons. ~ J.G. Ballard

Halt?" he said diffidently. He heard a deep sigh from the short, slightly built man riding beside him. Mentally he kicked himself.
I thought you must be coming down with some illness for a moment there," Halt said straight faced. "It must be two or three minutes since you've asked a question." Commited now, Horace continued.
One of those girls," he began, and immediately felt the Ranger's eyes on him. "She was wearing a very short skirt."
There was the slightest pause.
Yes?" Halt prompted, not sure where this conversation was leading. Horace shrugged uncomfortably. The memory of the girl, and her shapely legs, was causing his cheeks to burn with embarrassment again.
Well," he said uncertainly, "I just wondered if that was normal over, that's all." Halt considered the serious young face beside him. He cleared his throat several times.
I believe that sometimes Gallican girls take jobs as couriers.
he said.
Couriers. They carry messages from one person to another. Or from one buisness to another, in towns and cities." Halt checked to see if Horace seemed to believe him so far. There seemed no reason to think otherwise, so he added: "Urgent messages."
Urgent messages," Horace replied, still not seeing the connection. But he seemed inclined to believe what Halt was saying, so the older man continued.
And I suppose for a really urgent message, one would have to run."
Now he saw a glimmer of understanding in the boy's eyes. Hor ~ John Flanagan

Things as they appear every day and as they are engraved in our memory, facts and occurrences as they are perceived by senses, create an intricate labyrinth in the mind. The way how things are experienced in our environment and how they react in the arsenal of our imagination, creates a torrent of inspiring ideas that flood the speedy highways of our brains.
( " Labyrinth of the mind " ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

I realized very early the power of food to evoke memory, to bring people together, to transport you to other places, and I wanted to be a part of that. ~ Jose Andres

Noah," she whispers in reprimand.
"You've never complained when I've tried to undress you before."
Echo readjusts so she can see me, and for the first time since this morning, those eyes dance. "Yes, I have."
"When?"
"The last day of school."
"So you've complained once." When I led her to the nook of the abandoned hallway in the basement near my locker. I only meant to sneak in for a kiss during lunch, but things got hot and heavy and well ... sue me. "I didn't buy a yearbook, so I was memory-making. ~ Katie McGarry

The storms inside uncoil
into sky held calm by far seeing eyes
Memories dressed in the translucent
trickery of the mind,
so as to wear life upon themselves,
give up their tired dance and run
into free frequency ~ Tamara Rendell

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last? ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Speak not, move not, but listen, the sky is full of gold. No ripple on the river, no stir in field or fold, All gleams but naught doth glisten, but the far-off unseen sea. Forget days past, heart broken, put all memory by! No grief on the green hillside, no pity in the sky, Joy that may not be spoken fills mead and flower and tree. ~ William Morris

My next memory is of waking up, it then being dark outside, and my brother and sister fast asleep on the couch. Sitting up I sensed something was broken. Maybe the night? It was open and alive with lights and noises and worried voices. The adults were up, and in and out: we were all waiting for something. ~ Shane Levene

Left alone, I must quickly have drifted off into my own thoughts, for I did not notice the barman return. He must have done so, however, for I was soon drinking coffee, staring at the mirrored wall behind the bar - in which I could see not only my own reflection but much of the room behind me. After a while, for some reason, i found myself replaying in my head key moments from a football match I had attended many years earlier - an encounter between Germany and Holland. I adjusted my posture on the high-stool - I could see I was hunching excessively - and tried recalling the names of the players in the Dutch team that year. Rep, Krol, Haan, Neeskens. After several minutes I had succeeded in remembering all but two of the players, but these last two names remained just beyond the rim of my recall. As I tried to remember, the sound of the fountain behind me, which at first I had found quite soothing, began to annoy me. It seemed that if only it woulds stop, my memory would unlock and I would finally remember the names. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

When a man rapes a woman, he doesn't just rape her. He rapes her entire life. She's forced "to live a life with the pain from that memory for a lifetime. And for that judge to send a message that six months in county jail is a fair trade for what happened to that woman?..."I'd like to get my hands on that judge and that kid. .....

"I can forgive a lot of things. Rape isn't one of 'em. ~ Scott Hildreth

Memories wasn't a place, memories was in the mind. ~ Ernest J. Gaines

It is one of the many graveyards which are the Great War's chief heritage. The chronicle of its battles provides the dreariest literature in military history; no brave trumpets sound in memory for the drab millions who plodded to death on the featureless plains of Picardy and Poland; no litanies are sung for the leaders who coaxed them to slaughter. ~ John Keegan

I cherish my childish loves
the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged. ~ George Eliot

I felt the kiss still there on my forehead. Literally. It was frozen there. I could still feel it. I wanted to bronze it, like people do with baby shoes. I wanted to mount it and hang it over my mantelpiece. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

People can't seem to get it through their heads that there is never any healing or closure. Ever. There is only a short pause before the next "horrifying" event. People forget there is such a thing as memory, and that when a wound "heals" it leaves a permanent scar that never goes away, but merely fades a little. What really ought to be said after one of these so-called tragedies is, "Let the scarring begin. ~ George Carlin

The only memory I have was how the wrestler's balls that were thrust into my face left a saltiness on my lips. At first I assumed it was from the tacos, and then I realised I'd not eaten any today. I ~ Karl Pilkington

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone. ~ Rod Serling

The next morning I woke, and for a few moments I didn't know where I was. Then my memory of the night came back to me, and anger tightened my stomach, invigorating me. ~ Hannah Kent

The very act of recall is like trying to photograph the sky. The infinite and ever-shifting colors of memory, its rippling light, cannot really be captured. Show someone who has never seen the sky a picture of the sky and you show them a picture of nothing.

Still I have to try. ~ Rachel Lyon

Love was slow, creeping poison, loge was treacherous and insincere, love was a veil thrown over the misery of the world, love was sticky and indigestible, it was a mirror in which one could be what one was not, it was a spectre that spread hope where hope had long since dies, it was a hiding place where people thought they found refuge and ultimately found only themselves, it was a vague memory of another love, it was the possibility of a salvation that was ultimately equivalent to a coup de grace, it was a war without victors, it was a precious jewel amid broken fragments you cut yourself on: yes, Brilka, in those days that was love. ~ Nino Haratischwili

Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories ... The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would. ~ Elena Ferrante

I feel like I'm the most forgiven actress I can think of, probably because of this short memory people have! ~ Diane Lane

The spectacle takes us away from our routines. For at least a time, we feel part of something big, colorful, exciting. It is perhaps understandable that civilians are often more enthusiastic during wartime than soldiers who have experienced battle. The soldiers know that war is often boring and dirty as well as terrifying and colorful. Even so, after some years, an old soldier like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., could brush aside his earlier description of the pain, boredom, and death of war and declare that "its message was divine." The stench disappears, but the spectacle remains in memory's eye. ~ Nel Noddings