“Don't think about it. However it was it is over now. However it was or whereever it was. He is not lying there any more. He is nowhere now. Nowhere at all. Don't think about it.” DeathLossGriefDyingMemory Book:Moon Tiger Source: Moon Tiger
“I have learned to be suspicious of memory--my own, anyone's--but to accord it considerable respect. Whether accurate or not, it can subvert a life.” RespectMemoryDistrust Book:Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time Source: Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time
“...collective memory is unevenly distributed: some people have a rich and deep resource, for others it is minimal. A matter of education, and also of inclination. But however minimal, however threadbare, it is ballast of a kind. We all need that seven-eighths of the iceberg, the ballast of the past, a general past, the place from which we came. That is why history should be taught in school, to all children, as much of it as possible. If you have no sense of the past, no access to the historical narrative, you are afloat, untethered; you cannot see yourself as a part of the narrative, you cannot place yourself within a context. You will not have an understanding of time, and a respect for memory and its subtle victory over the remorselessness of time.” PastTimeUnderstandingEducationHistoryLearningMemory Book:Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time Source: Ammonites And Leaping Fish: A Life In Time
“She was obsessed, isolated, locked within herself, in feverish pursuit. She knew that something disastrous was happening to her, that possibly she was going mad, and she knew also that if she ceased for one moment to think about Steven, to carry him with her in her head, she might lose him. He was dead; he only existed in recollection; when recollection ceased even that tenuous existence would be gone. A name, no more. Like the host of names on the white tombstones of Bunhill Fields burial ground; the silent army beneath the soil.” DeathMemoriesLossGriefMemoryMourningRemembranceBereavementRecollections Book:Perfect Happiness Source: Perfect Happiness
“Children are not like us. They are beings apart: impenetrable, unapproachable. They inhabit not our world but a world we have lost and can never recover. We do not remember childhood -- we imagine it. We search for it, in vain, through layers of obscuring dust, and recover some bedraggled shreds of what we think it was. And all the while the inhabitants of this world are among us, like aborigines, like Minoans, people from elsewhere safe in their own time-capsule.” ChildhoodMemoryAdulthoodChilldren Book:Moon Tiger Source: Moon Tiger