The Memories We Make Quotes & Sayings

Freud's greatest discovery, the one which lies at the root of psychodynamics, is that the great cause of much psychological illness is the fear of knowledge of oneself-one one's emotions, impulses, memories, capacities, potentialities, of ones' destiny. We have discovered that fear of knowledge of oneself is very often isomorphic with, and parallel with, fear of the outside world.

And what is this fear, but a fear of the reality of creation in relation to our powers and possibilities:

In general this kind of fear is defensive, in the sense that it is a protection of our self-esteem, of our love and respect for ourselves. We tend to be afraid of any knowledge that could cause us to despise ourselves or to make us feel inferior, weak, worthless, evil, shameful. We protect ourselves and our ideal image of ourselves by repression and similar defenses, which are essentially techniques by which we avoid becoming conscious of unpleasant or dangerous truths. — Ernest Becker

The ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide. "He took his own life" is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands - and then out of them. How few of us - we that remain - can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. — Julian Barnes

What we make of people, and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, what memories we have, and whether our loyalties are to the past, the present or the future. — Theodore Zeldin

Perfume is magic. It's mystery. We recreate the smell of a flower. Of wood. Of grass. We capture the essence of life. Liquefy it. We store memories. We make dreams," he told her once. "What we do is a wonder, an art, and we have a responsibility to do it well. — M.J. Rose

Everything has a past, a voice, existed at some point, even things as small and seemingly meaningless as a house in a huge suburb. It's a house like every other house ... but at some point a family lived there, made it theirs, made it important. When people forget that history, that somebody at some point thought the house mattered, it just becomes an empty pile of nailed wood and brick and concrete that gets torn down for some strip mall or chain store to take its place ... and that's what happens more and more now, everything is disposable, always replaced with no thought at all. That's where things get lost, memories get lost, humanity slips through the cracks, because when we all fail to pay attention to the things that make up our lives, we're no longer human at all, not really. — Rebecca McNutt

Yet as the days went by and the pains in my feet subsided, I began to look back on my little adventure with a hint of fondness. When it comes to memories, it seems we all have an editor within who will - if it'll make for a good story - revise the senseless into symbols, or rephrase miseries into warm memories. — Ken Ilgunas

My feeling is that an observer needs to see four hundred and fifty stars to get that feeling of infinitude, and be swept away ... and I didn't make that number up arbitrarily, that's the number of stars that are available once you get dimmer than third magnitude. So in the city, you see a dozen stars, a handful, and it's attractive to no one. And if there's a hundred stars in the sky it still doesn't do it. There's a certain tipping point where people will look and there will be that planetarium view. And now you're touching that ancient core, whether it's collective memories or genetic memories, or something else form way back before we were even human ... astronomer Bob Berman quoted in The End of Night — Paul Bogard

We all have memories that are good, and some that are not so good. But if we focus on the ones that make us smile, it's easier to forget the ones that don't. — Darryl Duke

Our memories are what make us who we are. Some are real. Some are made up. But they are the stories that tell us who we are. Without them we are nobody. — Clare Furniss

In time of crisis, we summon up our strength. Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used. — Muriel Rukeyser

The grave is a crucible where memory is purified; we only remember a dead friend by those qualities which make him regretted. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

Until then we're going to keep making memories like this, moments when we're the only two people in the whole world. And when we get scared or lonely or confused, we'll pull out these memories and wrap them around us and they'll make us feel safe. And strong. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Prejudices emerge from the disposition of the human mind to perceive and process information in categories. "Categories" is a nicer, more neutral word than "stereotypes," but it's the same thing. Cognitive psychologists consider stereotypes to be energy-saving devices that allow us to make efficient decisions on the basis of past experience; help us quickly process new information and retrieve memories; make sense of real differences between groups; and predict, often with considerable accuracy, how others will behave or how they think.24 We wisely rely on stereotypes and the quick information they give us to avoid danger, approach possible new friends, choose one school or job over another, or decide that that person across this crowded room will be the love of our lives. — Carol Tavris

We are the sum total of our memories. Memories are the most precious things we have. Good or bad. That's what make us who we are. What would we be without them? — Alexandra Potter

We can all name people we take for granted, because everybody's swamped. Overwhelmed. Harried. We mean to make memories with people who matter, but often, we put it off for someday. And someday morphs into never, as Life's unpredictability claims the people we love. — Andra Watkins

....she has realized why people believe in a soul. It's because they have to for they have no other choice. It's hard to bear that all the conversations, all the memories you had with your parents,with your sisters, with the person you loved were burnt or buried, snuffed out of life. So conveniently, people invented the soul, not for the benefit of the deceased, but the loved ones he or she left behind, to make them feel that while they suffer, he or she is watching, and that they equally miss them, like they, too, think of them, and they, too, are watching him.
We can't think of the people we love as bodies buried in caskets or an urn full of ashes, so we think of them as a concentrated mist of nothingness which we call the human soul. No matter how hard they we try to make ourselves believe that they are around us, the truth is that they are gone. — Durjoy Datta

Time does not heal all wounds. Never does and never will ... it only strengthens the muscles of our heart to make us stronger but in truth the memories of those who passed through our lives shall always be with us until we meet again ... giving us both joy and pain. It up to each individual to use it to better ourselves or destroys us ... for it is a two edge sword. May we all use it to better our lives. — Timothy Pina

The little things we value as mundane or pithy usually turn into the big things in hindsight ... an "I love you" called out as the door closes, a walk around the same block with the same friend, Grandma's chocolate cake every time you visit ... the brush of skin on skin as two loves pause to breath in sync. Life isn't made up of miles, but memories. Cherish them while you're making them, not just after you can't make those memories anymore. — Toni Sorenson

Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life. — Carolyn Bramhall

I wish I had better news for everyone and you can all read my report on our findings in my upcoming paper, as well as on my Web site once I get it finished. In the end, though, my quest for Atlantis did teach me something. In all our pasts lie our futures. By our own hands and decisions we will be damned and we will be saved. Whatever you do, put forth your best effort even if all you're doing is chasing a never-ending rainbow. You might never reach the end of it, but along the way you'll meet people who will mean the world to you and make memories that will keep you warm on even the coldest nights. (Tory) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'll see you at your funeral, if you'll see me at mine. I'll wait at the edges for your ghost to rise (until the end of time). We'll find someplace nice to haunt, an abandoned beach house filled with memories of summer sunburns. Children will giggle as we tickle their feet at night and they'll never know the bad dreams we fight. We'll make our own heaven. Walking in places we used to walk until death, dies. — Pleasefindthis

Memories are what we cherish so let's make the present worth cherishing. — Amit Abraham

How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember ... No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory ... Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estranged ... memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. — Joshua Foer

My kids that's their backyard. I think when they're adults, their memories will be mostly of spending time at beach, the exploration, the freedom that you have. You take care of your house that you live in and we make our bed and we clean our cars and we do all that stuff, but yet we neglect sort of the place that really provides us with the greatest form of sustainability, which is the ocean. — Gabrielle Reece

Sixty years after the end of the war, the time has come to make this information available. With the number of survivors and witnesses diminishing by the day, and the reality that the Holocaust is fading into the pages of history and memory, we should not have to wait any longer. — Abraham Foxman

You have to remember that goodbyes are temporary because no one ever really leaves and nothing lasts forever. People are always with us, because they are in our hearts and in our memory. The only thing we can depend on is change ... Life is just a series of moments
a string of pearls that make up the necklace of your life and so every once in a while, to complete the circle, you need to end a chapter. — Amy Poehler

Are you sure about that, Mrs. Maddox?"
"Are you ever going to stop calling me that? You've said it a hundred times since we left the chapel."
He shook his head as he held the cab door open for me. "I'll quit calling you that when it sinks in that this is real."
"Oh, it's real all right," I said, sliding to the middle of the seat to make room. "I have wedding night memories to prove it.
He leaned against me, running his nose up the sensitive skin of my neck until he reached my ear. "We sure do. — Jamie McGuire

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words ... ) — Philip Larkin

I believe that God will help us to forget things, the memory of which would do us harm, or rather that He will enable us to remember only so much of them as will be for our good, and we, ourselves, not emotionally overwhelmed. The pain endured. The lesson learned. Let it now be forgotten! Face the future with courage, cheerfulness, and hope. Give God the chance and He will make you forget all that it would be harmful to remember. — Bill Vaughan

Life even at its tiniest molecule is impermanent, transient, unsure and fickle. We try to make it worthwhile not by adding value to it but by improving our social perception, seeking validation in our interactional circles. Life cannot be valued for in the end, rich or poor, smart or dumb, popular or hermit, we are nothing but dust, vapor, blurry memories that eventually are soon forgotten. — Crystal Evans

It is only when memory is filtered through imagination that the films we make will have real depth. — Louis Malle

The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. — Anna Quindlen

Sad truth is. . . we all end up alone on some death bed. Yeah? No way to take anybody else's place and no way we can be lying on the same one."

I was at the edge of the white-wed cloth. My shoes filled with concrete, as did my head, looking at the empty shell of what was once a woman full of wonder.

"Any way to make someone feel not so alone?" she asked.

"The only thing anyone can ever do is help someone feel a little less lonely before they get there."

"How does someone do that?"

"Memories. Help create memories. Better ones. Ones to replace the old. — S.D. Lawendowski

The ability to see our lives as stories and share those stories with others is at the core of what it means to be human. We use stories to order and make sense of our lives, to define who we are, even to construct our realities: this happened, then this happened, then this. I was, I am, I will be. We recount our dreams, narrate our days and organize our memories into stories we tell others and ourselves. As natural-born storytellers, we respond to others' stories because they are deeply, intimately familiar. — John Capecci And Timothy Cage

We are so strangely made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories that break our hearts that abide. — Mark Twain

That's one reason wildlife films matter: they're a set of permanent memories we can all share, making real those things we have not seen for ourselves, such as the plight of the albatrosses. In time perhaps this will make us wiser about protecting what we still have, by making it harder for anyone to say, 'I didn't know. — John Aitchison

We enshrine things to memory very differently than we experience them in real time. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has coined a couple of terms to make the distinction. He talks about the "experiencing self" versus the "remembering self. — Jennifer Senior

But, that doesn't mean you can give up on yourself. Never give up on yourself! Losin' hope and faith in yourself is the worst thing that can happen. I'll be there, every step of the way. I'll help you find those pieces and some of them might be so sharp that they'll cut me, but I'll bleed for you. I'll bleed every last drop for you. Let me help you." When she still says nothing, I add, "Once you have all the scabs off and your wounds are bleedin', you can really start to heal. We'll be able to make new memories and have great times together." Her breath hitches and then her voice comes out trembling, "I wasn't allowed out of the closet. I never got to bathe or use the toilet." I'm so shocked that she's talking that my mouth drops open and I don't quite register what she's saying. — Michelle Horst

I know for certain that we never lose the people we love, even to death. They continue to participate in every act, thought and decision we make. Their love leaves an indelible imprint in our memories. We find comfort in knowing that our lives have been enriched by having shared their love. — Leo Buscaglia

Isn't that what your memory was about, Bria? Losing control?"
I pause. "I never knew memories were about anything. Besides the obvious. You make them sound like dreams
subject to interpretation."
"I think the two are more related than we realize. It's all in how our minds frame them. How we decide what
and how
we remember. — Kirsten Hubbard

Neither of us looking for an apology, or to be proven right at the other's expense. No anxiety to make it better than it was, no yearning towards something more. No dramatic conclusion at all. Just an array of loose ends, wrapped in a bundle of memories, all tied together with a sinew of regret - regret that we could both ultimately live with. — Ron Currie Jr.

I didn't drink in the essence of the classroom. I didn't take legible notes or dance all night. I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we'd make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened. Then why am I so sad? — Lena Dunham

That is why the better part of our memories exists outside us, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or of the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate: wherever, in short, we happen upon what our mind, having no use for it, had rejected, the last treasure that the past has in store, the richest, that which, when all our flow of tears seems to have dried at the source, can make us weep again. — Marcel Proust

And sometimes we cling because the memory is so painful that we can't stop visiting it and hoping to make it come out differently. The risk of letting go is that we have to confront our own selves and our own possibilities. — Amy Bloom

When it comes to identity we are all constructs. Who we think we are is the result of our upbringing, memories, skill set, knowledge, experiences and personal belief system. Of all the onion layers that make us who we are, our belief system is what powers our core. It's what creates the essence of a human being and makes it possible for each of us to exceed our limits, confound expectations and do the impossible. — David Amerland

Gift cards?" Hi's complaining brought me back to the present. "Why not just hand me a note that says: I don't care enough to make an effort."
April 7. Hiram Stolowitski's sixteenth birthday.
"When exactly were we supposed to shop?" Shelton was scrolling Rex Gable emails on his laptop. "It's been a hectic week, bro."
"I bought you Assassin's Creed six weeks before your birthday," Hi shot back. "Waited in line all afternoon. The guy behind me smelled like fish tacos, but I stuck it out."
Ben clapped Hi's shoulder. "If it helps, I didn't remember to get you any gift. Tory and Shelton picked that up. I signed the card though. See? Ben. Right there."
"These are the memories that scar," Hi huffed. "I'm gonna be so complicated when I grow up. I'll probably film documentaries. — Kathy Reichs

We're defining the competitive landscape ... of who can provide the most supportive services that make life easier, keep track of things, that complement human memory in a way that helps us get things done, — Eric Horvitz

Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally. — Azar Nafisi

Our sense of self, formulated in large part by the untold number of cross-related connections that we make with our physical, social, and family environments, is reliant upon fitting into our social fabric. The educational environment, family relationships, peer groups, books, television, films, music, along with an assortment of other cultural events shape our emergent persona. Our successes and failures interacting in the world leave their collective imprint upon the wet clay of our forming brains. We are sentimental creatures who cling to past memories. We are inquisitive critters who venture forth from our protective dens to explore new territory. We are perceptive organisms equipped with five basic senses. We are sentient beings who can consciously organize our sense impressions into guiding ideas and useful principles. Our survival responses form a central cord of our emotions. We are receptive, compassionate beings that respond with both body and mind to global stimuli. — Kilroy J. Oldster

For our own part, we learned a great deal about the techniques of love, and because we didn't know the words to denote what we saw, we had to make up our own. That was why we spoke of "yodeling in the canyon" and "tying the tube," of "groaning in the pit," "slipping the turtle's head," and "chewing the stinkweed." Years later, when we lost our own virginities, we resorted in our panic to pantomiming Lux's gyrations on the roof so long ago; and even now, if we were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that it is always that pale wraith we make love to, always her feet snagged in the gutter, always her single blooming hand steadying itself against the chimney, no matter what our present lovers' feet and hands are doing. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Between one heartbeat and the next, a man can dream his entire life; tomorrow will open up in front of him and yesterday will retreat into time's abyss. There is no better place for personal memories than obscurity. Once lived, the past has very little value. And yet we carry its lifeless body into all future moments, allowing it to crush us with its weight, to identify us, and to speak for us. Even the most capable adults seem reluctant to make a decision without first consulting the past - the corpse - and listening to its endless rebukes. A wise man will ignore such counsel and observe the world from an infinite perspective. — Miguel Ruiz

It is immature and lazy to imagine we know everything there is to know about someone before we know that someone. We don't know their stories, their histories, their real live human feelings. We don't know their favorite movies and best memories and what makes them afraid. It is unfair to take one fact, one thing they've said or we heard they said, or one thing they wrote, or someone else's experience, or a group they identify with and make a character sketch. If people did that to us, the picture would be so woefully incomplete, we wouldn't even recognize our own description. — Jen Hatmaker

I, the driver of this car, that used to be Jim Ross, the teamster, and J.A. Ross and Co., general merchandise at Queen Centre, California, am now J. Arnold Ross, oil operator, and my breakfast is about digested, and I am a little too warm in my big new overcoat because the sun is coming out, and I have a new well flowing four thousand barrels at Los Lobos river, and sixteen on the pump at Antelope, and I'm on my way to sign a lease at Beach City, and we'll make up our schedule in the next couple of hours, and 'Bunny' is sitting beside me, and he is well and strong, and is going to own everything I am making, and follow in my footsteps, except that he will never make the ugly blunders or have painful memories that I have, but will be wise and perfect and do everything I say. — Upton Sinclair

My earliest memories of Gwyneth first singing is in bed when we would make up songs. The most I could do was harmonize, like, a third above, and at two years old, she'd be doing sixths. I said, 'Where in the world did that come from?' She'd just make up songs. — Blythe Danner

No one ever sits you down at age eight and says, 'Aminatta, this is what's happened so far.' You have to work it out for yourself, and by the time you do, it's ancient history to many of the players. We're trying to make sense of the past, so we start to excavate our memories. — Aminatta Forna

All of our memories are, like S's, bound together in a web of associations. This is not merely a metaphor, but a reflection of the brain's physical structure. The three-pound mass balanced atop our spines is made up of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion neurons, each of which can make upwards of five to ten thousand synaptic connections with other neurons. A memory, at the most fundamental physiological level, is a pattern of connections between those neurons. Every sensation that we remember, every thought that we think, transforms our brains by altering the connections within that vast network. By the time you get to the end of this sentence, your brain will have physically changed. — Joshua Foer

What have we learned so far about the human brain? It messes with memories, it jumps at shadows, it's terrified of harmless things, it screws with our diet, our sleeping, our movement, it convinces us we're brilliant when we're not, it makes up half the stuff we perceive, it gets us to do irrational things when emotional, it causes us to make friends incredibly quickly and turn on them in an instant.
A worrying list. What's even more worrying, it does all of this when it's working properly. — Dean Burnett

The homunculus narrator experiences everything backward - his first memory is Unverdorben's death. He has no control over Unverdorben's actions, nor access to his memories, but passively travels through life in reverse order. At first Unverdorben appears to us as a doctor, which strikes the narrator as quite a morbid occupation - patients shuffle into the emergency room, where staff suck medicines out of their bodies and rip off their bandages, sending them out into the night bleeding and screaming. But near the end of the book, we learn that Unverdorben was an assistant at Auschwitz, where he created life where none had been before - turning chemicals and electricity and corpses into living persons. Only now, thinks the narrator, does the world finally make sense. — Sean Carroll

Then trust me. I think the safest place for me is with you, and I won't regret it. I don't regret anything. The things that we do and the things that happen ... to us," I gulped and pushed down memories, "make us who we are. — Shelly Crane

Don't slag off other creators or companies. We'll cheerfully mock dumb politicians on Twitter, but we try to never slam another creator's work or make fun of another company's projects or initiatives. First, because life's too short. We'd rather use that time to celebrate the fantastic work of colleagues and friends. Second, because it's a small world, and people have long memories. A few snarky words today can ruin a chance for an incredibly rewarding creative partnership tomorrow. — Greg Pak

Our bad memories and our bad experiences are what make us who we are and what make us grow and allow us to learn, if we choose to see the lessons in those experiences. — Elijah Wood

Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future ... If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly. — Thomas S. Monson

You are a transitional generation, said Aunt Lydia. It is the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make. It is hard when men revile you. For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts.
She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way.
She said: Because they won't want things they can't have. — Margaret Atwood

We would make mistakes, we would argue, we would make up. We would lose the people we love and find new ones, and hold our memories close. We would fight for each other, again and again. We would keep living. We were in love.
And we were only human, after all. — Jocelyn Davies

Our mind has its history, just as our body has its history. You might be just as astonished that man has an appendix, for instance. Does he know he ought to have an appendix? He is just born with it ... Our unconscious mind, like our body, is a storehouse of relics and memories of the past. A study of the structure of the unconscious collective mind would reveal the same discoveries as you make in comparative anatomy. We do not need to think that there is anything mystical about it. — Carl Jung

You make more money selling advice than following it. It's one of the things we count on in the magazine business
along with the short memory of our readers. — Steve Forbes

Augustine says that we may, out of our dead sins, make stepping stones to rise to the heights of perfection. What did he mean by that? He meant that the memory of our falls may breed in us such a humility, such a distrust of self, such a constant clinging to Christ as we could never have had without the experience of our own weakness. — James Stalker

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

I realize that the memories I cherish most are not the first night successes, but of simple, everyday things: walking through our garden in the country after rain; sitting outside a cafe in Provence, drinking the vin de pays; staying at a little hotel in an English market town with Larry, in the early days after our marriage, when he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and I was touring Scotland, so that we had to make long treks to spend weekends together. — Vivien Leigh

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives. — Alexander McCall Smith

If you're gonna cry, cry because of all the good times we had, and all the laughs, and all the fun shit we did, and cry because those memories make you happy. — James Frey

We are in a maze which we built, and then we fell into, now can't get out. To make the game into something real, something more than merely an intellectual exercise, we elected to lose our exceptional faculties, to reduce us an entire level. This unfortunately, includes a loss of memory. — Philip K. Dick

Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living. — Alysha Speer

My earliest memories of my mom were of her multi-tasking - preparing dinner while checking on homework and housework; clearing the dinner plates while setting out bowls for breakfast; making sure we ate our breakfast while lining up bread, lunch meats, apples, and snacks assembly-line style so we could make our lunches. — Christine Pelosi

Each generation searches their memories for time lost, feels the urgent exigencies of the present, and worries about the uncertainty of the future. Akin to preceding generations, how we live, the choices we make for surviving and loving, is our story. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?"
"It may be for some, father, but not for us. Axl and I wish to have again the happy moments we shared together. To be robbed of them is as if a thief came in the night and took what's most precious from us."
"Yet the mist covers all memories, the bad as well as the good. Isn't that so, mistress?"
"We'll have the bad ones come back too, even if they make us weep or shake with anger. For isn't it the life we've shared? — Kazuo Ishiguro

Thats the thing about memories, they can make you sad, even if they are good memories. You like thinking back to them; they're the greatest treasure we have, and yetis always makes you a little sad because something has irreversibly passed. — Nicolas Barreau

Is it intelligent to make ourselves miserable while living in the past, haunted by memories while being inexorably swallowed by them? Whenever we reminisce about our past life, we are advised in our tradition to be in a state of gratefulness. Be mindful of nurturing unnecessary grief and staying stuck in old pain. — Hiram Crespo

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

What it had indexed to was only an idea of a place, an abstraction formed from memories too brief and passing to account for the small effects of time: wind scouring and lifting the dust of the plains of Nineveh in immeasurable increments, the tuck of a river farther into its bend, hour by hour, year by year; the map would become less and less a picture of fact and more a poor translation of memory in two dimensions. It reminded me of talking, how what is said is never quite what was thought, and what is heard is never quite what was said. It wasn't much in the way of comfort, but everything has a little failure in it, and we still make do somehow. — Kevin Powers

Old photographs
We take pictures with people
so they could remember us
and leave memories behind
so they don't forget us.
And the difference
between the two are the same.
We leave these moments
in the air,
hoping that somewhere
someone will find them
and make sense of everything
we chose to ignore. — Robert M. Drake

satisfying. You don't have to psychoanalyze yourself; you can stop obsessing about your body and dwelling in disappointment and frustration. There is only one principle that applies: Life is about fulfillment. If your life isn't fulfilled, your stomach can never supply what's missing. "What Am I Hungry For?" Everyone's life story is complicated, and the best intentions go astray because people find it hard to change. Bad habits, like bad memories, stick around stubbornly when we wish they'd go away. But you have a great motivation working for you, which is your desire for happiness. I define happiness as the state of fulfillment, and everyone wants to be fulfilled. If you keep your eye on this, your most basic motivation, then the choices you make come down to a single question: "What am I hungry for?" Your true desire will lead you in the right direction. False desires — Deepak Chopra

But I do know that everything happens for a purpose. These things, they make us stronger, emotionally. And when we have a God to run to that loves us, it helps spiritually. The bible says that Jesus is our comforter and our helper. The memories of our past will always be there, but with Jesus on our side, your past won't hold you down. And right now, your past is keeping you down. — Vickie Valladares

We had almost exactly a year together as a couple after that. She wanted to swim the Great Barrier Reef. I wish we had gone. I wish we had read books to each other. We had one weekend of sexy-times in New York City while her father looked after the kids. I wish we'd had more. I wish we'd walked more. I wish we hadn't sat in front of the TV so much. It was nice, we cuddled, we laughed at Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, but it didn't make much in the way of memories. We did such ordinary, banal things. Ordered pizza and played Trivial Pursuit with her sister and her dad. Helped the kids with homework. We did dishes together more than we ever made love. What kind of life is that?"
"Real life," Harper said. — Joe Hill

If for some reason she never regained her memories, she still didn't want to lose this male. Even the thought of that happening sent a shot of agony ricocheting through her.
Larissa tore her lips back fromAiden's "I might never regain my memories," she blurted, needing to let him know.
"Then we'll make new ones. — Katie Reus

My childhood was never great. We moved from place to place a lot. There were times when we had no definite place to stay. So, a basic level of security was not always there. Therefore, when you finally make it out, and you become who I am, you're humbled by the memories of those situations. — LeBron James

Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do. — Bruce Bartlett

Never would I have a more memorable time than the month I spent in the mountains, though I wonder, when I say this, if it appears so only because it is our nature to make a heaven out of places to which we can never return. — Yiyun Li

What will your children remember? We can change the world inside our own houses. Take the gift of this moment and make something beautiful of it. Few worthwhile experiences just happen; memories are made on purpose. — Gloria Gaither

Each year comes with its own memories! Memories that make us ponder! Memories that shake our nerves and thought to think about things we did, things we could have done, things we should have done, the right time and timing for the yes and no we could have say with courage or humility, the right time and timing of our steps and things we should have never done! When you remember the year, you remember something! Something good or something bad! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

So maybe we won't ever win the lottery, or marry royalty, or make that last second shot. That doesn't mean we won't have amazing adventures, meet exceptional people, and make indelible memories. The trick is to notice before it's too late. — John Green

I tilted her head back as far as it would go without dunking her back in the icy water and started to breathe into her mouth. I breathed in all the love I had for her. I gave her air flavored with my confidence that we were meant to be, and laced with the knowledge that she made me a better kind of man. I breathed out and filled her lungs with the future I wanted to share with her and all the memories I wanted to make with her. — Jay Crownover

The wheat field has ... poetry; it is like a memory of something one has once seen. We can only make our pictures speak. — Vincent Van Gogh

It might have been introduced slowly over the course of the years as you recall this memory over and over. So that was a very cool but complex idea that we thought about representing in the film but could not find a way to make it work. — Pete Docter

Meanwhile, NBC and I plan to continue our relationship with several new co-ventures including a new music show, while we also explore our ideas for me to create and host a new show of my own. I will not go quietly into the night ... expect more great music and entertainment done in my own unique unmistakable and undeniable way. The Voice has given me all the altitude and incentive to do just that. Thanks for the memories and make way for many more! — Cee Lo Green

Dreams that we see today, make the memories that we live tomorrow, And, memories that we remember, make what dreams we see today. — Sankalp Kohli

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon. — Diane Keaton