So Many Memories Quotes & Sayings

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today
that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past. — Virginia Woolf

Like all of my important memories, it has a potency that has influenced the pocket of time that holds it, so I can remember that particular Saturday afternoon, even though in many ways it was no different from any other. I can remember, for example, what van der Glick was wearing as she stepped out of the elevator, which was a dress covered with clownish polka dots. Rainie would make these heartbreaking stabs at femininity; indeed, she still does. It's not that she doesn't possess a woman's body now, and didn't posses a girl's body then. But clothes never seemed to fit her correctly, and the more girlish they were, the worse they would hang. — Paul Quarrington

I don't think I'll ever act again. I have so many wonderful memories, but those days are over. — Sean Connery

Clearly anyone who wants to dismiss Eichmann's testimonies on the grounds of their demonstrated unreliability and shameless self-serving lies can easily do so, and many of my colleagues have done precisely this. But what if our default position is not to dismiss everything Eichmann said and wrote just because he was lying most of the time, but rather to ask what among this mass of lies might nonetheless be of help to the historian, given his unique vantage point and the sheer volume of his testimony?

-- Collected Memories: Holocaust and Postwar Testimony, page 11 — Christopher R. Browning

There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives. — Azar Nafisi

When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky, on lucky summer nights, my cousin would pick me up in his Chevy Super Sport and drive me down along the Ohio River to Cincinnati to hear some rock 'n' roll. Those were exciting times, and the bands would play late into the night, rocking soaked in sweat. When I hear the Ready Stance, these memories come back to me and I remember that Cincinnati has produced so many wonderful musicians. The Ready Stance is among that number. You will be hearing a lot about them in the future. — Chris Frantz

There were endless stories locked into the silent, cool mass of the Wall, so many memories of stories of so long ago, now only to be imagined. What an incredible feat of human imagination and engineering. A real tribute to visionary and tenacious (if tyrannical) leaders who held a nation together with a common goal, from dynasty to dynasty over the many centuries. — Braam Malherbe

Through the years, I have so many wonderful memories of playing with the Red Wings: winning four Stanley Cups, scoring big goals, going into battle every night side by side with my teammates, playing with every ounce of effort I could muster. — Ted Lindsay

There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had been killed by her own imprudence, by the reckless Salina pride; and now, just at the moment when her memories had come alive again after so many years, she found herself even without the solace of being able to blame her own unhappiness on others, a solace which is the last protective device of the desperate. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

The sea can bind us to her many moods, whispering to us by the subtle token of a shadow or a gleam upon the waves, and hinting in these ways of her mournfulness or rejoicing. Always she is remembering old things, and these memories, though we may not grasp them, are imparted to us, so that we share her gaiety or remorse. — H.P. Lovecraft

When you're young you have such expectations of each other. So many needs. And when you're older ... " He shrugs. "You want someone who understands. We've lived different lives. We've loved different people. But I think that there will always be that ... " He struggles for the right word. "That understanding we share. Of having grown up in the same world, of having live through the same memories. — Carrie Ryan

I turned to him and kissed him, slowly lingeringly, my hands running over the hard, smooth curves and angles of his body. It wasn't that first kiss so many months before. This one was big and complicated and full of colours and textures. It held stories in it, and memories, and that made it even better. — Katherine Applegate

It is a bit more challenging for the simple fact that now the stories I am writing are relying more on my imagination than on facts, more on research than on memory; so it is basically a slower writing process, more reading, more exploring. On the other hand, this approach is a little bit relieving too, since many times while writing [How the Soldieer Repairs the Gramophone] I felt too close and equal to my character. — Sasa Stanisic

For some people the past is so vicious that it creates a loop of bad memories that runs constantly inside their hearts. A loop so bad that sometimes it reaches out to those capable of seeing it to let us know to take extra care of the ones who were hurt. It tells us to let them know that just because the world is eat up with mean, it doesn't mean we all are. That even though the past hurt them, it doesn't have to destroy their future. Give as many smiles away as you can. They're free and make the world a much prettier place. You may not have the best clothes or the latest in shoes, but everyone has a unique designer smile that is worth millions, especially for those who need its warmth. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Perhaps there is to be found in Pastrana the key to something which happens in Spain more frequently than is necessary. Past splendor overwhelms and in the end exhausts the people's will; and without force of will, as can be seen in so many cases, by being exclusively occupied with the contemplation of the glories of the past, they leave current problems unsolved. When the belly is empty and the mind filled with golden memories, the golden memories continually retreat and at last, though no one goes so far as to admit it, there is even doubt whether they ever existed and there is nothing left of them but a benevolent and useless cultural residue. — Camilo Jose Cela

This was a voice that drew out memories stretched thin by years of recollection, like paper unfolded and refolded too many times. A voice that brought back, like a wave, the memory of another time on this bridge, a night so long ago, everything black and silver and the river rushing away under her feet ... — Cassandra Clare

So many memories, so much joy and sadness. — Marie Lu

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. — George Eliot

Because of the past, so many people are living in the past! No one is free from the past, but we are free to choose to move from the past into the present or stay in the past, though we live in the present! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I see the stars in the sky, and they make me think of life. Of the many plans dwelling inside my mind, but how few memories I have. No matter how hard I try, I can't choose which memories I want to keep or which I can forget. So I've been wondering what's the purpose of creating memories if I can't just keep them all? — J.C. Reed

Photography has definitely been my favorite way to remember things. At least for me that's how my brain processes things, of memories or moments - if I take a picture of it I can remember so many more details. I think it's about choosing the exact picture in my head that signifies or symbolizes a moment - almost as if you're using film. It's almost archaic. — Dianna Agron

I grew up on the sets of Bonanza and most of my (childhood) memory is (on the set of) Little House. I was actually an assistant cameraman on Highway to Heaven. So, I observed my father working for many years. He was a very giving person. I really respected the way he ran his sets. He never treated anyone differently - whether you were the guest star of the show or the grip. Everybody was treated with respect. — Michael Landon Jr.

Something will be there when the flood recedes. We know that. It will be those people now standing in the water, and on those rooftops - many black, many poor. Homeless. Overlooked. And it will be New Orleans - though its memory may be shortened, its self-gaze and eccentricity scoured out so that what's left is a city more like other cities, less insular, less self-regarding, but possibly more self-knowing after today. A city on firmer ground. — Richard Ford

When old friends reconnect, there is a refreshing newness, after great memories wash over you, the stage is set for so many more. — Tom Althouse

Again there are so many records which contain fond memories and music and songs of which I have to say I am quite proud. There are a couple of tracks which in retrospect on which I now wish I had pushed the red button, however I'm sure this is true of any artist career that has spanned the number of years that mine has. I do not believe however that I have ever made a bad record and I have certainly never made a record to which I didn't give my complete commitment. — Greg Lake

Life is worthy of the name only when it reflects Reality in action. No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: I lived well I do not need to live again. Most of us die wishing we could live again. So many mistakes committed, so much left undone. Most of the people vegetate, but do not live. They merely gather experience and enrich their memory. But experience is the denial of Reality, which is neither sensory nor conceptual, neither of the body, nor of the mind, though it includes and transcends both. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man's age represents a fine cargo of experience and memories. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

This was a memory I wanted to keep, whole, and recall again and again. When I was fifty years old I wanted to remember this moment on the porch, holding hands with Cameron while he shared himself with me. I didn't want it to be something on the fringes of my memory like so many other things about Cameron and myself. — Sara Zarr

Chocolate is the first luxury. It has so many things wrapped up in it: Deliciusness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good. — Mariska Hargitay

So is death a journey? Is it to another place?" she asked. "Is it another planet?"
"Many have wondered this very question,"replied rovender. "But there is an old Caerulan saying: When your journey reaches its destination here, may you walk on through the memories of those still with us. — Tony DiTerlizzi

There are so many wonders awaiting us. If we can upload memories, then we might be able to combat Alzheimers, as well as create a brain-net of memories and emotions to replace the internet, which would revolutionize entertainment, the economy, and our way of life. Maybe even to help us live forever, and send consciousness into outer space. — Michio Kaku

When I am gone, release me, let me go. I have so many things to see and do, You mustn't tie yourself to me with too many tears, But be thankful we had so many good years. I gave you my love, and you can only guess How much you've given me in happiness. I thank you for the love that you have shown, But now it is time I travelled on alone. So grieve for me a while, if grieve you must, Then let your grief be comforted by trust. It is only for a while that we must part, So treasure the memories within your heart. — Robert Bryndza

I am a complete sentimentalist when it comes to clothes. I have so many memories attached to them that I can't throw anything out. — Vanessa Paradis

I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them. — Paul Lockhart

The game against the Vikings back in my second year stands out. It was kind of a turnaround for us. It allowed us to make a run at the playoffs for the first time in quite a while. The memories are so many it's hard to pin one down. — Drew Bledsoe

Even now, as she walks down the long corridor, the crude jokes, the lewd propositions, the stinging remarks, the jeering catcalls and
the leering laughter echo in her ears. She can hear all the vile names she had been called post scandal. Hateful, ugly names that don't stop resonating in her head even after so many years. They never would. Some memories are etched too deeply to be erased completely. — Chandana Roy

It's funny how a hello is always accompanied with a goodbye. It's funny how good memories can make you cry, it's funny how forever never seems to last, it's funny how much you would lose if you forgot about your past, it's funny how friends can just leave when you're down, it's funny how when you need someone they never are around, it's funny how people change and think they're so much better, it's funny how some many lies are packed into one love letter, it's funny how one night can hold so much regret, it's funny how you can forgive but not forget, it's funny how ironic life turns out to be, but the funniest part of all, is that none of that is funny to me. — Auliq Ice

If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future. — Orison Swett Marden

I have memories, but I don't know if they are really mine or if I've just seen so many pictures. I think that I remember riding on his sailboat with him, and playing under his desk in the Oval Office, but those images are everywhere, so do I really remember them or just imagine how it all happened? — Bethany Turner

I release ribbons of gratitude to flow back upon the path I have walked as it stretches out behind me, so they brush past everyone whose path crossed my own. May they feel the brief kiss of remembrance within their hearts, there and then gone again, passing like a spring breeze, so that they suddenly know the things they have done for others, in so many ways big and small, seen and unseen alike, somewhere are known and treasured. — Cristen Rodgers

How many rooms are there in the chambers of your heart? How many rooms full of memories can you describe like the one I'm going to tell you about. You know how you left him don't you? The man you were so in love with once. Bing Cherry Silk. Another man left those for you didn't he? And you put them on, just like I did. — Valentine Bonnaire

So many objects, so many memories. Each was being labelled and packed away in bags just as it was in her mind. To be stored in an area that would sometime be called upon to teach and help in future life. — Cecelia Ahern

It's hard to forget hurtful things, isn't it? Children with autism have good memories. So it's much harder for them to forget bad experiences than it is for us. So fill them with as many good experiences as possible. — Keiko Tobe

The mind has so many pictures Why can't I sleep with my eyes open? The mind has so many memories Can you remember what it looks like when I cry? I'm trying, trying to tell you All that I can in a sweet and velvet tongue But no words ever could sell you Sell you on me after all that I have done. — Rufus Wainwright

The spread of languages shouldn't imply the decay of national languages. There are so many literary and historical memories, so many joys and sorrows of the past linked to them that it is an obligation for all of us to guard their present and future. — Kato Lomb

Memories, so sweet and bitter.. they had both nourished and devoured him for so many years. Until a time came when they began to fade, turning faint and blurred, only an ache to be quickly pushed away because it went to your heart. For what was the use of remembering all you had lost? — Cornelia Funke

We've had a wonderful, wonderful life together. We've been in many places, we've had the experiences, and now we have the memories. But most of all we have developed the solid knowledge and understanding and background regarding the foundation stones of life, so that we know for a surety that what we are doing [in helping to build the Kingdom of God] is true. Those foundation stones are granite stones; not soft, not limestones. They are granite. — David B. Haight

Campus ... brings back so many memories that I would ... have made ... — Michael Scott

The most important, the longest lasting, the strongest emotional, and the most practiced memories are the ones that are embedded the deepest in the brain, and because we have retrieved them so many times previously, they are the most able to be retrieved. We all hear about people who can remember their youth, their phone number, or street address from 70 years ago, but they cannot recall what they had for breakfast. The memory of this morning's breakfast wasn't rehearsed, and wasn't very important, so it fades away quickly. — Daniel Levitin

I had so many beliefs against being a singer or what it takes. There was a lot of pain associated with that. The rejection of it all. I lived in a rejection state of mind. Not because of my voice; the mike never rejected me. It was harboring all those bad memories of being broke. It teaches you your worth. Nothing good comes from that. — Ester Dean

All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us - and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth - no one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger. — Tucker Elliot

My true glory is not to have won 40 battles ... Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories, ... But ... what will live forever, is my Civil Code. — Napoleon Bonaparte

It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new. — Carrie Brownstein

I've thought of killing myself so many times. I don't do it, not because I am a coward, but because it would be easier for me to be dead. What's my life? I make money and I make memories. That's not a life. I don't kill myself because living is my own life sentence. — Jeanette Winterson

I am happy as happiness goes, for a woman who has so many memories and who lives the lonely life of an actress. — Lillie Langtry

He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not 'Who are you?' but 'So it was you all the time.' All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered...He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a man. — C.S. Lewis

Departure of a year welcomes so many new memories — Munia Khan

In these days [1908], when all things and memories of the past are at length become not only subservient to, but submerged by, the matters and needs of the immediate present, those paths of knowledge that lead into regions seemingly remote from such needs are somewhat discredited; and the aims of those that follow them whither they lead are regarded as quite out of touch with the real interests of life. Very greatly is this so with archaeology, and the study of ancient and curious tongues, and searchings into old thoughts on high and ever-insistent questions; a public which has hardly time to read more than its daily newspaper and its weekly novel has denounced - almost dismissed - them, with many other noble and wonderful things, as 'unpractical,' whatever that vague and hollow word may mean. — Battiscombe G. Gunn

It is difficult sharing and capturing so many years of memories and the people behind the words-and even though that guest book can speak volumes, in between, the pages remain so silent. — Eugenie Anderson

I realize now that the reason we often feel so bad about change is because of all those beautiful things that happen in our lives. I mean, I can't remember ever feeling sad about many things other than a great memory. I believe in contentment and love and laughter. I believe when we fear for our content it is then, most of all, we feel sadness. — Dito Montiel

My memories are not books. They are only stories that I have been over so many times in my head that I don't know from one day to the next what's remembered and what's made up. Like when you memorize a poem, and for one small unimportant part you supply your own words. The meaning's the same, the meter's identical. When you read the actual version you can never get it into your head that it's right and you're wrong. — Elizabeth McCracken

There is so much,I thought,just under the surface. So many memories, darting like silvery minnows in a shallow stream. — S.J. Watson

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories. — Steven Wright

It was a trick. It was this place, all the memories. His longing heart and the darkness conspiring. But his eyes told him it was no trick. He jumped down off the steps and walked toward her. Hoping. Fearing. He'd done this before. So many times. Caught sight of a slender black-haired woman and impulsively called to her, only to have her turn and gaze at him with eyes that were questioning, coldly polite, and never, ever hers. — Jennifer Donnelly

And it is because they contain thus within themselves the hours of the past that human bodies have the power to hurt so terribly those who love them, because they contain the memories of so many joys and desires already effaced for them, but still cruel for the lover who contemplates and prolongs in the dimension of Time the beloved body of which he is jealous, so jealous that he may even wish for its destruction. For after death Time withdraws from the body, and the memories, so indifferent, grown so pale, are effaced in her who no longer exists, as they soon will be in the lover whom for a while they continue to torment but in whom before long they will perish, once the desire that owed their inspiration to a living body is no longer there to sustain them. Profound Albertine, whom I at once saw sleeping, and who was dead. — Marcel Proust

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear. That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives. — Joshua Foer

There were many tears, many unsure times, many troubled moments. The fun memories were only a few, but even so, those memories will shine bright like stardust, and continue to shine on in my heart. — Mika Yamamori

I have so many just precious, fond memories that revolve around food, and that's why I have such a passion for it. — Kimberly Schlapman

And I began to feel sorry for myself; for so many years, my drawer full of memories had held the same old stories. — Paulo Coelho

This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some restless sparrow I know will flee any moment into the breeze. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer
both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams. — Bram Stoker

He looked at Kevin again. Kevin didn't recognize him, but maybe some part of him remembered the boy he'd met so many years ago. Neil's past was locked in Kevin's memories. It was proof he existed, same as this game they both played. Kevin was proof Neil was real. Maybe Kevin was also the best chance Neil had at knowing when to leave again. If he lived, practiced, and played with Kevin, he'd know when Kevin started to get suspicious. — Nora Sakavic

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

There'll be moments in life, sweet pea, that stand out in your memories like a photograph. Scenes captured perfectly in your mind, frozen in time with each detail as colorful as it was that first time you saw it. 'Flashbulb memories,' some people call them," she'd told me, her eyes crinkling up and nearly disappearing in a face etched with too many laugh lines to count. "Most people don't recognize those moments as they happen. They look back fifty years later, and realize that those were the most important parts of their entire life. But at the time, they're so busy looking ahead to what's coming down the line or worrying about their future, they don't enjoy their present. Don't be like them, sweet pea. Don't get so caught up in chasing your dreams that you forget to live them. — Julie Johnson

The music
the making of music and the performing of music
produced memories, many good, some bad, some difficult. But he knew for sure that he'd spent too much of that time living not in the present moment of creating or playing music but in the expectation or hope of some reward, some success. He had always been waiting for his life to start when that happened, when the recognition came. It had taken him twenty years to realize how utterly wrongheaded that was.
It was as if the twenty years didn't amount to much, that he hadn't actually been present for so much of his life. — Graham Joyce

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory
meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion
is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. — William Maxwell

Because in the end, we die. It's like Chekhov observed in so many of his plays: 'in two hundred years, no one will even know we were here. — Zack Love

It doesn't matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I don't need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix-tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape. — Rob Sheffield

Artemis grabbed her shoulders, for once abandoning his shell of icy composure. "Holly, Holly, speak to me. Your finger is it okay?"
Holly wiggled her fingers, then curled them into a fist.
"I think so," she said, and whacked Artemis right between the eyes. The surprised boy landed in a snowdrift for the third time that day.
Holly winked at an amazed butler.
"Now we're even," she said.
Commander Root didn't have many treasured memories. But in future days, when things were at their grimmest, he would conjure up this moment and have a quiet chuckle. — Eoin Colfer

I hate the way bitterness is like a black, bubbling tar pit in me, and I hate the way so many memories of you are in that pit. — Lorna Landvik

Let's take it slow because I'd like each moment we share to be etched in my memory. And I'd like these memories to make me smile wistfully someday. Let's take it slow because I'm keeping a journal of our journey, and someday I'll turn it into a book. I'd like our story to be rich in detail, and full of laughter and intriguing conversations. Let's take it slow because all my life, I've always rushed into so many things, and they were all mistakes - I'd like you to be one of those things I'm going to do right. You deserve that much. — Nessie Q.

Why is one a slave to thought ? Why has thought become so important in all our lives -thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in the brain cells? Perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if you have you may have said, "it's of very little importance- what is important is emotion." But I don't see how you can separate the two. If thought does not give continuity to feeling, feeling dies very quickly. So why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightened lives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Every death of those you love is the death also of so many shared memories and understanding, of a now irretrievable part of your own life. — Richard Flanagan

And if anger and fear could persist - then also, of course, stronger emotions could as well, such as love. Was that what drew some people back to reincarnate within their own families? Was that what caused some children to remember their past connections? And if so, then perhaps this phenomenon, these children's memories he had studied so carefully, was not against the laws of nature, after all. Perhaps it was the foundational law of nature that they were proving, what he'd been documenting and analyzing for over thirty years without knowing it: the force of love. He shook his head. His brain was going soft, maybe. Or maybe not. He'd kept so many of these questions at bay all these years, and now they whirled around him, touching him with something like awe, on their way to someplace else. — Sharon Guskin

Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. — Haruki Murakami

He noticed that she threw away the crumbled bus ticket on the street as soon as she got down. He picked it up and put it in his pocket along with his own a memorabilia of their first date together, just like a strand of her hair he would find later on his shirt and the broken pen cap that she would go on to search in the laboratory and so many other such small things which he would collect. — Faraaz Kazi

Driving to see my childhood home was very significant for me. It taught me the importance of home, especially to children. Your home is more than just a shelter. It is more than just a place to showcase your design skills. It is more than just a means to an end (especially if you would rather live somewhere else). It is the most importance place of your life. It provides you solace and refuge from the harsh world. It provides tangible comforts, like your cozy sofa and warm bed. But it also provides other comforts in the energy it gives off. You will have so many memories in this home. There will be many firsts here, and if you have children, they will remember even the smallest details about your home - especially all of its off-beat character. — Jennifer L. Scott

We enter this universe alone in search of microscopic beauty - and while we love, or are loved by others - we leave this world completely alone, having only found infinite sorrow. Despite there being so many of us, each of us tragically realizes that everyone is on a solitary journey. No one else can see what we see, hear what we hear, feel, what we feel. All we have of each other are glimpses of moments, whispers of experiences, memories of the past we wish we could make eternal, but in the end, we become a faint memory in the minds of a few good people. — Bruce Crown

So many of my memories are generated by and organized around food: what I ate, what people cooked, what I cooked, what I ordered in a restaurant. My mental palate is also inextricably intertwined with the verbal part of my brain. Food, words, memories all twist together, so it was the obvious way to structure my life. Each memory of food opened up an entire scene for me, it was the key that unlocked everything. — Kate Christensen

I finally figured out that I'm solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won't go away. It doesn't matter where I am, or how alone
I always have such a crowded head. — Charles De Lint

One of the reasons why old people make so many journeys into the past is to satisfy themselves that it is still there. — Ronald Blythe

God bless you if you have one child, but I don't think anybody should have just one child. Everybody needs a sibling. I have siblings, and I have so many amazing, precious memories with my siblings. I don't know what I would do if I had been an only child. — Sherri Shepherd

I'd seen old Yardley Slickers- the makeup now just a waxy crumble- sell for almost one hundred dollars on the internet. So grown women could smell it again, that chemical, flowery fug. That's how badly people wanted it- to know that their lives had happened, that the person they once had been, still existed inside of them.

There were so many things that returned me. The tang of soy, the smoke in someone's hair, the grassy hills turning blond in June. An arrangement of oaks and boulders could, seen out of the corner of my eye, crack open something in my chest, palms going suddenly slick with adrenaline. — Emma Cline

It felt increasingly, as I became more whole, that I had made it all up, and that I was a phoney. I had to come to some place of acceptance. If I made it all up, then I am an unspeakably evil person, leading so many wonderful, intelligent people astray. What a scheming mind I must have. I knowledge will be hard too live with. But harder still is the thought that perhaps, just perhaps it is all true; that I really was horribly, ritualistically abused in a satanic setting, over and over again and as a result my mind fragmented. The implications of that are completely overwhelming. It was me, my body, that they did those things to. No, I would rather believe I am an evil and deceitful person. At least the I can change, and say sorry, and live a better life from now on. — Carolyn Bramhall

Heroes in fact die with one's youth. They are pinned like butterflies to the setting board of early memories - the time when skies were always blue, the sun shone and the air was filled with the sounds and scents of grass being cut. I find myself still as desperate to read the Sussex score in the stop-press as ever I was; but I no longer worship heroes, beings for whom the ordinary scales of human values are inadequate. One learns that as one grows up, so do the gods grow down. It is in many ways a pity: for one had thought that heroes had no problems of their own. Now one knows different! — Alan Ross

That solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade, made Don Fabrizio's heart ache as he stood black and stiff in a doorway: this eminently patrician room reminded him of country things; the chromatic scale was the same as that of the vast wheat fields around Donnafugata, rapt, begging pity from the tyrannous sun; in this room, too, as on his estates in mid-August, the harvest had been gathered long before, stacked elsewhere, leaving, as here, a sole reminder in the color of the stubble burned and useless now. The notes of the waltz in the warm air seemed to him but a stylization of the incessant winds harping their own sorrows on the parched surfaces, today, yesterday, tomorrow, forever and forever. The crowd of dancers, among whom he could count so many near to him in blood if not in heart, began to seem unreal, made up of that material from which are woven lapsed memories, more elusive even than the stuff of disturbing dreams. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

I grew up with the 'Star Wars' movies since before I have many memories. We had them on VHS back in the day, so they were part of the fabric of growing up in my family. — Ian Doescher

I have so many priceless memories to embrace at that final moment that it will soften the blow. I know my friends will continue the fight, and they will ensure victory. — Karen Swart

Maybe PTSD really is triggered by a single incident, a stressor, as it's known in the psychiatric community, and maybe the attack at Al-Waleed was that stressor for me, but as I have learned in the intervening years, I was not damaged by that moment alone. In fact, while there are specific memories that resurface with some frequency, like the suicide bomber in Sinjar or the order riot at Al-Waleed, I find myself most traumatized by the overall experience of being in a combat zone like Iraq, where you are always surrounded by war but rarely aware of when or how violence will arrive. Like so many of my fellow veterans, I understand now how that it is the daily adrenaline rush of a war without front lines or uniforms, rather than the infrequent bursts of bloody violence, that ultimately damages the modern warrior's mind. — Luis Carlos Montalvan