Strong Memory Quotes & Sayings

Our memory is enhanced by the emotion attending the event. The more intense the feelings the more accessible to the memory is the event. Few of us live lives so emotionally charged that we can truly, accurately retrieve all of it ... Often only our crisis events are preserved with strong emotions. For our own survival we can't forget them, and then we too easily forget the good stuff. — Robert Dykstra

You must have the courage to face what happened today and to live with it in your heart and to use the memory of it to grow and be strong. — Allan Frewin Jones

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

We can now give you a biological reason why cramming doesn't work, says Dr. Tully. The best way to prepare for a final exam is to mentally review the material periodically during the day, until the material becomes part of your long-term memory. This may also explain why emotionally charged memories are so vivid and can last for decades. The CREB repressor gene is like a filter, cleaning out useless information. But if a memory is associated with a strong emotion, it can either remove the CREB repressor gene or increase levels of the CREB activator gene. — Michio Kaku

Memory is imagined; it is not real. Don't be ashamed of its need to create; it is the loveliest part of your heart. Myth is the true history. Don't let them tell you that there are no monsters. Don't let them make you feel stupid, just because you are happy to play down in the dark with your flashlight. The mystical world depends on you and your tolerance for the absurd. Be strong, my darling ones, and believe! — Nick Cave

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." — George W. Bush

A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment. — Michel De Montaigne

It used to be, you'd open your mouth
And the weather changed. You'd
Open your mouth and the sky'd spill
That dry, missing-someone kind of rain
No matter the season. And it hurt
Like a guitar hurts under the right hands.
Like a good strong spell. Now
You're all song. Body gone to memory.
And guess what? It hurts
Harder. — Tracy K. Smith

There are several ways. You can think of a memory from before you came into your powers. Or focus on a time when your felt particularly strong human emotions: jealousy, fear, love..."
"What do you think about?"
Setting his glasses on his nose, he replied, "Your mother. — Rachel Hawkins

Her heart still quickened at the memory. The way his strong arms felt around her, his wine-scented breath across her lips, the toe-curling, mind-numbing, soul-searing kiss he'd given her. — Ava Stone

I didn't want it to be one good memory that led to a lot of bad ones. I wanted it to stay what it was, one amazing moment, something that was strong and sweet enough to stand on its own. Something I could remember without any pain.
- Kate — Elizabeth Scott

I carry it all with me, in the quiet pools and strong currents of my being. I fill my hands with the black dirt left by the river's birth. I believe that what I hold in my hands is memory: like the river, it takes what it touches, carrying it along until all that remains is the bed over which the water flows. — Kim Barnes

Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. — Alice Meynell

You remind me of a boy I used to know
Same Smile, same easy, laid-back style
And man, could he kiss
Blew my mind the very first time
His lips touched mine.
You remind me

You remind me of a boy I used to like.
Same eyes, strong arms, same open mind
And man, could he dance
Arms around me, lost in a trance
I'd hear his heart
You remind me

I'm scared of you
How did you find me?
Turn and walk away
'Cause you remind me

You remind me of a boy I used to love
Same laughter and tears, shared through the years
And man, how he felt

Made my bones more than melt
He touched my soul.
You remind me

I'm scared of you
How did you find me?
Turn and walk away
'Cause you remind me — Malorie Blackman

History is natural selection. Mutant versions of the past struggle for dominance; new species of fact arise,and old, saurian truths go to the wall, blindfolded and smoking last cigarettes. Only the mutations of the strong survive. The weak, the anonymous, the defeated leave few marks: field-patterns, axe-heads, folk-tales, broken pitchers, burial mounds, the fading memory of their youthful beauty. History loves only those who dominate her: it is a relationship of mutual enslavement. — Salman Rushdie

Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It has memory's ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope's fall,
truly unequivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,
it is a power of
strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory's eye;
it's conscientious inconsistency. — Marianne Moore

I have a very strong visual memory of the first time I made him laugh. That was remarkable. I was like, "Oh, God, I just made Jack Benny laugh." — Harry Shearer

The Pavilion did not burn by lightening," she said.
He hesitated again. "It holds the memory of fire," he said at last. "Lightening is young and strong and thoughtless, but it could also wish to visit the site of some particular victory of one of its kind
as a young soldier recently commissioned might visit the scene of some great battle
— Robin McKinley

Are you healed? One sure way to tell if you've healed from your past pain is to be aware of how you feel when someone brings it up. Are you anxious, sad, emotional? If you are, the wound has not completely healed. But if you can hear a name from your past, recall a memory without flinching, then you know that your scar tissue is protecting you and that inside you're healthy and strong again. It's a wonderful feeling to feel nothing at all when your hurtful past doesn't hurt anymore. — Toni Sorenson

They're very strong in memory. Didn't do very much in microprocessors or digital signal processing. — Jack Kilby

What southern whites further sought, and in a sense demanded, was respect. This the North provided after 1876 in paeans to the courage and dedication of soldiers on both sides. Resentment of northern power, the war's destruction, and Reconstruction continued to be strong in the South, and the work of white-supremacist politicians, army veterans, and southern women turned that resentment into a long-lasting ideology of the Lost Cause. Northerners, for their part, congratulated themselves on winning the war and freeing the slaves; they also took pleasure in feeling superior to the South for many generations, while industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and other social changes diverted much of their attention from wartime issues [184]. — Paul D. Escott

Transactive memory works best when you have a sense of how your partners' minds work - where they're strong, where they're weak, where their biases lie. I can judge that for people close to me. But it's harder with digital tools, particularly search engines. — Clive Thompson

But I've been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don't get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn't even true at the time - love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions - and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives - then I plead guilty. — Julian Barnes

Once again her face changed. She was like someone standing in strong sunlight on a mountain top, looking back down the valley from which she had emerged and trembling with the memory still in her bones of the length and nature of the road she had travelled, the glaciers and forded rivers, the weariness and danger, and conscious of how far she still had to go. — Magda Szabo

I squeeze Finn's hand back, and my eyes fall closed. I feel something like the whisper of a touch to my face. Deep from the back of my mind, a voice that sounds a lot like my own speaks to me like a memory, telling me I'm strong and loved and that everything is going to be okay.
And, for some strange reason, I believe it. — Cristin Terrill

I have a strong memory of the day I was told that my father had a weak heart and that he had to go to the hospital. He died when I was nine years old on the same day that Franklin Roosevelt died; it was his 45th birthday. — Alan J. Heeger

A strong emotion, especially if experienced for the first time, leaves a vivid memory of the scene where it occurred. — Algernon Blackwood

I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know now the wind has been speaking to me. Only I couldn't understand because I was too scared. I am scared now as I write these words. Still, there is nothing else to do. — Christopher Pike

Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge, and brings the figures on the tablet of memory into strong relief. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

The summary of Lambert and Lillenfelt's "Bloodstains" in Scientific American Mind in the October 12, 2007 The Informed Reader passes along many of these authors' strong opinions on complex and controversial topics without informing the readership that the authors' perspective is extreme, polarized, and vulnerable to challenge at many crucial points.
It is clear that false memories can be implanted in about 25% of subjects, when those memories concern issues in the normal and expectable range of experience. However, about 75% of subjects resist such efforts, and efforts to implant memories of abuse or offensive medical procedures are almost universally rejected. Therefore a wholesale attack against therapies that explore patients' memories is unwarranted. "Recovered Memory Therapy" is not a school of treatment. It is a slur used to mischaracterize approaches offensive to the authors' perspectives, designed to evoke an emotional bias against those to whom the slur is applied. — Richard P. Kluft

Her official published findings were that memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain. — Jodi Picoult

Memory is a double-edged sword, Uthas. It can keep you strong through dark times, but it can also cripple you, keep you locked in a moment that no longer exists. — John Gwynne

I believe that that love remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment. — Michel De Montaigne

Strong winds buffet the sea oats and tall dune grasses, tossing sand and seabirds where it will, winding my sister's golden hair into sunlit spirals of silk until it becomes the only good memory I have of her
the only memory I allowed myself to keep. — Karen White

However, because the object raising events has a strong reference to each event listener, this can cause a memory leak when the lifetime of the object raising events exceeds what would be the lifetime of an event listener. — Anonymous

A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will is required to become a great Chess player — Bobby Fischer

I have a strong memory of my early childhood. I can remember life before I was two. I remember being toilet-trained like it was last week - and it wasn't last week. — Caroll Spinney

Tea is the tast of my land:it is bitter and warm,strong,and sharp with memory.It tastes of longing.It tastes of the distance between where you are and where you come from.Also it vanishes-the taste of it vanishes from your tongue while your lips are still hot from the cup.It disappears,like plantations stretching up into the mist.I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other.How sad that must make you-like children who long for absent mothers.I am sorry. — Chris Cleave

If you want to be able to recall everything and anything in detail,
then you need to be strong enough to feel all bad memories as well. — Toba Beta

Alongside the liberating relief of the veteran who tells us his story, I now felt in the writing a complex, intense, and new pleasure, similar to that I felt as a student when penetrating the solemn order of differentials calculus. It was exalting to search and find, or create, the right word, that is, commensurate, concise, and strong; to dredge up events from my memory and describe them with the greatest rigor and the least clutter. — Primo Levi

I wrap my arms around his neck, feel his arms hesitate before they embrace me. Not as steady as they once were, but still warm and strong. A thousand moments surge through me. All the times these arms were my only refuge from the world. Perhaps not fully appreciated then, but so sweet in my memory, and now gone for ever. — Suzanne Collins

The House, being strong, should be generous ... but the constituents have a right to more than generosity ... The law gives me my seat. In the name of the law I ask for it. I regret that my personality overshadows the principles involved in this great struggle; but I would ask those who have touched my life, not knowing it, who have found for me vices which I do not remember in the memory of my life, I would ask them whether all can afford to cast the first stone ... then that, as best judges, they will vacate their own seats, having deprived my constituents of their right here to mine. — Charles Bradlaugh

But these days, there's also a strong economic argument for doing away with capital punishment. With California facing its most severe fiscal crisis in recent memory ... it would be crazy not to consider the fact that it will add as much as $1 billion over the next five years simply to keep the death penalty on the books. — John Van De Kamp

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. — Julian Barnes

He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No sir; I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Music is the language of some other state, born of memory. For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of some other world like music? — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Time thins the cloth of memory. As the ages pass, its rich colors fade. Strong wool is beaten by the elements until the pattern of its lesson disintegrates, leaving holes in the truth it was meant to carry on. Even the stains of blood bend and bleed, leaving but faded blotches without meaning, mere shadows of lessons that came before, their warnings lost within the obscure impression that remains. — Melissa McPhail

The strongest memory is not as strong as the weakest ink. — Confucius

The heart is a mystical thing. It keeps us alive by pumping blood to every part of our body. It is a strong organ which scientists say has no memory. But the heart is also a thing of great speculation and power; spoken, written, and even put into songs, by many great authors, singers, actors and poets around the world. The heart is supposed to be the center of love, feeling, loneliness and heartbreak.
And it was that organ, that great red Valentine's Day sought-after-object that was at present causing me trouble — Renee Lake

I'm still willing to continue living with the burden of this memory. Even though this is a painful memory, even though this memory makes my heart ache. Sometimes I almost want to ask God to let me forget this memory. But as long as I try to be strong and not run away, doing my best, there will finally be someday ... there will be finally be someday I can overcome this painful memory. I believe I can. I believe I can do it. There is no memory that can be forgotten, there is not that kind of memory. Always in my heart. — Natsuki Takaya

But how could he explain anything to them, when they understood good but not goodness, strong but not strength, black but not blackness?
Give us bread! the Savages cried. Heal us!
They were frightened by the consecrated wine, believing that the Black-Gowns drank human blood.
This is the blood of JESUS, said Pere Masse.
Was that a man? they asked.
He was the SON OF GOD, but He became a man to die for us. In memory of his sacrifice, we drink His blood.
At this they drew back and whispered in their language, with many terrified glances. — William T. Vollmann

Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?" I ask.
"We thought he might," my mother says.
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"We didn't want to take away your choices," my mother says.
"But Grandfather never did tell me about the Rising," I say.
"I think he wanted you to find your own way," my mother says. She smiles. "In that way, he was a true rebel. I think that's why he chose that argument with your father as his favorite memory. Though he was upset when the fight happened, later he came to see that your father was strong in choosing his own path, and he admired him for it. — Ally Condie

The most dangerous heart disease:
strong memory — Nizar Qabbani

Let me recommend to you not to have too great dependence on your practice or memory, however strong those impressions may have been which are there deposited. They are forever wearing out, and will be at least obliterated, unless they are continually refreshed and repaired. — Joshua Reynolds

You are a memory
too strong to leave this world ... — William Stafford

Mischel refers to this skill as the "strategic allocation of attention," and he argues that it's the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber. But that's wrong. Willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It's about realizing that if we're thinking about the marshmallow, we're going to eat it, which is why we need to look away. — John Brockman

I have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children. — Benjamin Franklin

Reflective writing produces distinct rewards. A writer does not claim to live exclusively in the moment. A pensive writer retreats into oneself in noble attempt to meld memory, thought, faith, doubt, and other strong emotions into thought capsules while exploring the inscrutable web of creation. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I shook my head back and forth as though I was a human etch-a-sketch, erasing the memory. — Nicole Gulla

Memory is weak, imagination strong. — Marty Rubin

Memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain. But there's a fine line between a negative moment and a traumatic one. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten, or so warped that they are unrecognizable, — Jodi Picoult

I fought back the memory of our wedding night. He was a virgin; his hands trembled when he touched me. I had been afraid too
with better reason. And then in the dawn he had held me, naked back against his chest, his thighs warm and strong behind my own, murmuring into the clouds of my hair, Dinna be afraid. There's two of us now. — Diana Gabaldon

Sometimes our childhood experiences are emotionally intense, which can create strong mental models. These experiences and our assumptions about them are then reinforced in our memory and can continue to drive our behavior as adults. — Elizabeth Thornton

He wouldn't spend another standing in the darkness, hot and sick and shaking inside with a confused mess of feelings that weren't worth analyzing. That he shouldn't have felt anyway.
With Rachel gone it was like balancing on the edge of a cliff - and all the little wildflowers, the netting of grass and roots that kept the cliff from sliding into the sea below, were gone. It was just Matt standing there looking down, waiting to fall.
Even Rachel's memory, the sweet recollection of all they had built, all they had shared, was no longer strong enough to fight gravity. From the moment he had looked across the wet grass and seen Nathan Doyle standing in the shadow of a stone saber-toothed tiger, something had changed inside him. Something battened down had torn free, like a sail taking its first deep breath of sea air.
It terrified him.
And at the same time it exhilarated him.
Which terrified him all the more. — Josh Lanyon

A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now proceeds a wish which finds its fulfilment in the creative work. — Sigmund Freud

Imagine being just strong enough to remember what life was like, feeling things, your heartbeat, the world around you. And imagine you couldn't have it anymore, couldn't even properly remember it, but there was just enough that some deep part of you knew what you were missing. Wouldn't you do anything to get it back, if it was right there for the taking? Wouldn't you be willing to kill for it? — Apollo Blake

There is a strong link between synesthesia and photographic memory (technically called eidetic memory) or at least heightened memory (hypermnesis). Many synesthetes used their synesthesia as a mnemonic aid. — Richard E. Cytowic

But ... I think ... I want to live with all my memories. Even if they're sad memories. Even if they're memories that only hurt me. Even ... even if they're memories that I'd rather forget. If I keep them and I keep trying, without running away ... if I keep trying, then someday ... someday I'll be strong enough that those memories can't defeat me. I believe that ... I want to ... believe that. Because I want to think ... that there's no such thing ... as a memory that's okay to forget. -Momiji — Natsuki Takaya

Only with steadfast memories can we now be strong so as to undo the mistakes of the past, to begin anew and build from the rubble of their betrayal ... — F. Sionil Jose

For there below ground sits the Dark God, strong to call men to judgment; he sees all, and writes it in his memory. — Aeschylus

I lift the tablet to my mouth. And then I hear a voice from a place deep in my memory. You are strong enough to go without. Fine, Grandfather, I think to myself. I will be strong enough to go without the tablet. But there are other things I'm not strong enough to go without, and I intend to fight for them. — Ally Condie

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
"Patroclus," he said. He was always better with words than I. — Madeline Miller

I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, "What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?"
"Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. "Ask."
I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward.
"Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. "Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.
p150 — Suzie Burke

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man. — H. Rider Haggard

Scraps of Magic:
These are little scraps of magic & when you paste them together you get a memory of something fine & strong, she said. Sometimes it takes till you're 40 to see it though. — Brian Andreas

Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations - of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a good book. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. — Chip Ingram

She clenches the crystal necklace that Dagna gave me, the one I always wear. Never lose this, Harmony. It is a symbol of the beginning. The power that still lingers inside it will help you, but even as it fades, the memory of everything until now will carry you as if it were still strong. — Brandy Nacole

My first strong musical memory is of the Villa-Lobos Sixth Quartet which my parents were rehearsing. I remember that it reminded me of big teddy bears dancing around. — Leonard Slatkin

He pulled her hand to his chest. She was suddenly flooded by the oh-so-recent memory of lying against his chest, his strong arms around her, the warmth of his breath in her ear as he whispered to her. — Melanie Dickerson

Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying. — Michel De Montaigne

We shall miss Leopardstar. I remember her from all the way back when I was an apprentice in ThunderClan. I always respected her, and, though her loyalty to RiverClan never wavered, she was a leader who understood the importance of keeping every Clan strong. She had the heart, courage, and strength of the mighty cat she was named for. — Erin Hunter

(In response to a picture critic.)

I'm actually a very joyful person. But being a genius with a photographic memory mixed with a strong case of OCD makes for a difficult picture sometimes. — Calvin W. Allison

I let myself go. I thought little of the houses and trees, but applied colour stripes and spots to the canvas ... Within me sounded the memory of early evening in Moscow - before my eyes was the strong, colour-saturated scale of the Munich light and atmosphere, which thundered deeply in the shadows. — Wassily Kandinsky

I saw Jake in the hallway at school. I pretended not to notice him.

I saw Rachel, too. She had a dark look in her eyes. Like she hadn't slept. Like something was really wrong.

Even Cassie seemed grim. It had gotten to all of us. It's not so easy to just forget terror. It's not easy to just ignore the memory of your leg being ripped off. Of being dismembered. Torn apart.

One of these days, I thought, one of us is going to go crazy. Totally lock-me-up-in-a-rubber-room nutso. It was too much. This wasn't how life was supposed to be.

One of us would snap. One of us would lost it. It could happen, even to strong people.

-Animorphs #5, The Predator page 52 — K.A. Applegate

Some of 'em [virtues] like extinct volcanoes,
with a strong memory or fire and brimstone. — Douglas William Jerrold

How infinite was love, twining in and out of hope and memory like a braid with three strong strands, so much the Bright Tower of every human's life and soul. — Stephen King

Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for hat we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you. — Jamaica Kincaid

She'd so believed he could - that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long.
That was perhaps the hardest truth of all - that Ralston, the man she'd pined over for a decade, had never been real. He'd never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he'd never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood. — Sarah MacLean

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it's a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water.
I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.
'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?'
'A heart. She should get a heart.'
Little did they know. They are the tattoos. — Pat Summitt

Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer ... She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true ... She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture ... All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. — Willa Cather

A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We can choose not to remember this day, but bones have strong memories. And earth never forgets. — Magaly Guerrero