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Memory Loss Quotes

Browse 96 quotes about Memory Loss.

Memory Loss Quotes

“I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?”

ChangeEmotionIdentityAbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorChildDreamingSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderUnrealDissociationMirrorAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderIncestIdentity CrisisUnrealityMemory LossDissociativeSplit PersonalityTriggerIdentity ConfusionImpostorTriggeredDissociated StateDream LikeLookalikePersonality SwitchEmotionalsIdentity AlternationIdentity Switch
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“In his moments of lucidity, which would later become increasingly rare and painful, he suggested an explanation of what was happening to him: “I am a guilty man. That is why I am being punished like Abuya's heretical sons, I gazed when I should not have gazed and turned my eyes away when I should not have. I saw a sin committed… a crime…I could have, I should have, done something, called out, shouted, struck a blow. I forgot our precepts, our laws, that require an individual to struggle against evil wherever it appears. I forgot that we can never simply remain spectators, we have no right to stand aside, to keep silent, to let the victim fight the aggressor alone. I forgot so many things that day…That is why I am forgetting other things now. Can there be anything worse than that?” Yes, there was worse, there is worse: to forget that one has forgotten.”

SinSilenceGuiltAgingMemoryForgettingDementiaMemory LossLucidity
Book:The Forgotten
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“Alzheimer's is not about the past - the successes, the accolades, the accomplishments. They offer only context and are worthless on places like Pluto. Alzheimer's is about the present and the struggle, the scrappy brawl, the fight to live with a disease. It's being in the present, the relationships, the experiences, which is the core of life, the courage to live in the soul.”

SoulCourageDiseasePresent MomentPresentAlzheimersMemory Loss
Book:On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer's
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“Dissociation is the common response of children to repetitive, overwhelming trauma and holds the untenable knowledge out of awareness. The losses and the emotions engendered by the assaults on soul and body cannot, however be held indefinitely. In the absence of effective restorative experiences, the reactions to trauma will find expression. As the child gets older, he will turn the rage in upon himself or act it out on others, else it all will turn into madness.”

AbuseMadnessMental HealthMemoryTraumaChild AbusePtsdDissociative Identity DisorderRepressionDissociationAmnesiaChildhood TraumaRitual AbuseMemory LossPost Traumatic Stress DisorderDissociative AmnesiaDissociative DisordersPosttraumatic Stress DisorderRepressing Emotions
Book:Satan's High Priest
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“Years from now, I’ll be sitting in my wheelchair in the brightest spot in Amsterdam Park, next to the old wooden swings, catching a bit of sun. Next to me, on the new bench that some future mayor will have put there, will be my caregiver who came from a faraway country. She’ll know very little Hebrew, and at my old age, I’ll also remember only a few words—in Hebrew or at all. By then, my memory will have crumbled like an old biscuit left in a coat pocket since last winter, and every time my caregiver calls me “Papi,“ I’ll think she really is my daughter. Those moments in which the past is erased and replaced by an invented history will be my most meaningful ones. They will be what keeps me alive.”

PastMemoriesHistoryAgingMemoryForgettingDementiaAlzheimersMemory LossCaregivers
Author:Etgar Keret
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“Personal memory – the palest of all lights – is the wellspring of personality and creativity. Memory is the also the cornerstone of culture and the basis of community and family relationships. Without memories of our thoughts and actions, we would not recognize our individual self. Without personal memories, there is no personal character or soul of a nation. Without contextual memories, the concept of universal principles of goodwill and the individual desire to perform noble selfless acts would be moot. There can be no symmetry in any human relations without memories to provide a baseline foundation for reflection and contemplation. It would fatally tax a person’s desire to achieve fairness in their personal dealings without memories of prior acts of greed or benevolence to provide structure for judging the merits of their current behavioral options. Without the haunting of memory to remind us of our propensity to hate outsiders and readiness to overlook the disfranchised, there would be wholesale discrimination and unchecked commission of infamous crimes.”

SelfMemoriesPersonalityMemoryMemoirMemoir WritingMemories QuotesMemory Loss
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“The doctor had succeeded with a profound achievement while in the clutches of the otherworld. This made him different from the beings that inhabited this strange place; the shadows with vacant faces and absent expressions. After an incalculable amount of time, and with incredible persistence, he had fought against the gravitational pull intent on stealing his memories, and managed to maintain a sense of self.”

SelfFantasyPerseveranceMemory LossOtherworld
Book:The Tetris Effect: A Fantasy Thriller Novel
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“We are often given pills or fluids to help remedy illness, yet little has been taught to us about the power of smell to do the exact same thing. It is known that the scent of fresh rosemary increases memory, but this cure for memory loss is not divulged by doctors to help the elderly. I also know that the most effective use of the blue lotus flower is not from its dilution with wine or tea – but from its scent. To really maximize the positive effects of the blue lily (or the pink lotus), it must be sniffed within minutes of plucking. This is why it is frequently shown being sniffed by my ancient ancestors on the walls of temples and on papyrus. Even countries across the Orient share the same imagery. The sacred lotus not only creates a relaxing sensation of euphoria, and increases vibrations of the heart, but also triggers genetic memory - and good memory with an awakened heart ushers wisdom.”

HeartPhilosophyWisdomPowerFlowerHealthEnlightenmentDoctorsWineMedicineMemoryIllnessSmellEastScriptureCuresTeaTemplesTreatmentHealthcareRemedyFlowersPhysiciansScentMetaphysicsEgyptPillsElderlyVibrationsAwakenedTombsGeneticsEuphoriaCureMemory LossRosemaryEgyptiansLilyLotus FlowerLotusIllnessesPapyrusAncient EgyptiansSmellingAncient MedicineOrientGenetic MemoryFluidsAwakened HeartBlue LilyAilmentSacred LotusImagery SacredIncreaes MemoryPower Of ScentPower Of Smell
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“The Eviction by Stewart Stafford The mind's paper vessel crumples Sodden with learning and memory Ne'er to sail waves of reminiscence A living statue, hewn by sculptor Time. The physician nor the shaman console Self-pitying sobs in the moaning wind Brought down by jackals in the dunes The skull's tenant but a daily squatter Nostalgic waves batter alien shores Déjà vu of the blood and the collegial A stranger's reflection in misting eyes A sandcastle sacked to the four winds © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved”

FamilyIdentityOld AgeAgeingDementiaMemory LossElderly PeopleAlzheimer SAlzheimer S DiseaseThe Father
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be? You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look. Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know. (pp.174-175)”

ReasonMomentsTimeMemoriesAgingLifetimeMemoryPatternsAfter DeathMeaningful LifeTime PassingOrdinary LifeEnd Of LifeMemory LossEnd Of Life Musings
Book:The Leisure Seeker
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“Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.”

DeathMemoriesSilenceFamilyMarriageFantasyDreamsPridePersonalityDramaEgoLiesCompetitionDivorceBetrayalNostalgiaReal LifeObsessionDenialJealousyGirlfriendBoredomInsecurityCheatingAttachmentDesiresSentimentalBoyfriendThe PastFailuresTreacheryFlirtationMemory LossFightsBickeringFalse MemoriesFuneralsDisappointmentsPicturesVacationsBad RelationshipsDay DreamsStimulus SeekingHow It WasAnnoying HabitsDrama SeekingIncompatabilityMarriage Difficulties
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“A stroke. Robert has never been kind to his body . . . It is only the carrier of that wonderful mind, after all. A case for the crown. And Robert has cared for that mind like a tiger with her young: he has given up drinking and drugs, kept a strict schedule of sleep. He is good, he is careful. And to steal that--to steal his mind--burglar Life!Like cutting a Rembrandt from its frame.”

WisdomAgeYouthMental HealthAgingWriterAgilityMemory LossStrokePulitzer Prize
Book:Less
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“What are you to me?' she asked. Archer's eyes locked with hers. 'Nothing.' But it didn't feel like nothing when his fingers reached down and he took hold of the sash that kept her robe tied together. He held it as if he couldn't decide if he wanted to untie it or tug her closer to him. 'Why are you lying?' she asked. 'I thought we'd already established that I'm not very kind.”

LyingNothingStephanie GarberEvangeline FoxJacksEvangelinePrince Of HeartsA Curse For True LoveJacks Of The HollowMemory Loss
Book:A Curse for True Love
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“In this chapter I restrict myself to exploring the nature of the amnesia which is reported between personality states in most people who are diagnosed with DID. Note that this is not an explicit diagnostic criterion, although such amnesia features strongly in the public view of DID, particularly in the form of the fugue-like conditions depicted in films of the condition, such as The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Typically, when one personality state, or ‘alter’, takes over from another, they have no idea what happened just before. They report having lost time, and often will have no idea where they are or how they got there. However, this is not a universal feature of DID. It happens that with certain individuals with DID, one personality state can retrieve what happened when another was in control. In other cases we have what is described as ‘co-consciousness’ where one personality state can apparently monitor what is happening when another personality state is in control and, in certain circumstances, can take over the conversation.”

ConsciousnessPrejudiceMemoryMental IllnessMisunderstandingDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisForgetfulnessStigmaDissociationStereotypesAmnesiaMultiplicityMultiple Personality DisorderStates Of ConsciousnessMultiple PersonalitiesSwitchingAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociative DisorderDissociative AmnesiaMpdMisdiagnosisFugueException To The RuleAltersDidDsmAmnesiacDiagnosingPersonality SystemDiagnostic CriteriaFugue StatePersonality SwitchDsm5
Book:Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves
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“I Understand Mom The fog wraps around her mind bits and pieces of tattered thought become blank within her eyes minutes ago is gone, the sadness inside. Reaching for a wonderful memory that was just an hour ago you fight so hard to bring it back until you finally let it go. I’m sorry, I don’t remember as the tears reach her face tears roll down a beautiful smile while your days are being erased. I understand Mom; I’m here for you there’s blessings at our door God is here, He will guide us through with His love and so much more.”

UnderstandingMotherhoodGuidanceRememberingAlzheimersMemory Loss
Author:Ron Baratono
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“He placed a cigarette in his mouth and sat down at his regular spot over in the white gazebo, where all the smokers were supposed to do their dirty business. He patted his pockets, searching for a lighter. Nothing. He’d forgotten to bring it. But it wasn’t his fault. He was expected to forget everything because he was the lucky recipient of life’s final going-away present, that red velvet, chocolate-covered cake of wonderfulness that the doctors liked to call Alzheimer’s. With Alzheimer’s, suddenly nothing was his fault anymore. No fault. No blame. No choice. No freedom.”

HealthcareDementiaAlzheimersMemory Loss
Book:Pale Highway
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“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.”

MemoryAlzheimersMemory Loss
Book:Sum It Up: 1,098 Victories, a Couple of Irrelevant Losses, and a Life in Perspective
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“Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.”

TraumaMental IllnessChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderSense Of SelfEmotional PainDissociationPersonality DevelopmentTraumatizedAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociativeCoping MechanismAbused ChildrenAltersDefense MechanismAlter IdentitiesCompartmentalizationAlter PersonalityPosttraumaticPosttraumatic StressAlter Identity
Author:Bethany L. Brand
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“Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who thought of himself as a cowboy or a terrorist; Kato the cutter; anorexic Shirley, whose only self-indulgence was binge drinking and the occasional salad sandwich. I didn’t dislike Shirley. I was afraid of her. Shirley knew things I didn’t.”

AbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAnorexiaAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociativePersonalitiesAltersIdentity AlterationSplit Personalities
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“While some accused and convicted child molesters have inappropriately influenced the media, the public, and many in the clinical and legal professions by claiming that traumatic amnesia does not occur in child sexual abuse, workers in the field of trauma psychology have accumulated solid empirical evidence over the past 100 years that it does occur and is common. Its existence and natural history are documented throughout the clinical literature. from: Traumatic amnesia: The evolution of our understanding from a clinical and legal perspective, Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, Volume 4, Issue 2, 1997”

Child AbuseChild Sexual AbuseAmnesiaRape CultureMemory LossDissociative AmnesiaRepressed MemoryRape MythsTrauma MemoriesRecovered MemoryRecovered Memory TherapyPsychogenic Amnesia
Author:Charles L. Whitfield
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“One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question "Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?" A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Long periods with no memory of abuse should not be regarded as evidence that the abuse did not occur. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 62(6), Dec 1994, 1167-1176”

MemoryChild AbuseSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseIncestMemory LossChild RapeRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryRepressed MemoryRecovered Memory Therapy
Author:Linda Meyer Williams
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“Amnesia, which is a loss of memory, is a symptom of many different trauma and/or dissociative disorders, including PTSD, Dissociative Fugue, Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Amnesia can affect both implicit and explicit memory.”

AbuseVictimMemoryTraumaChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAmnesiaSurvivorsMultiple Personality DisorderMemory LossDissociative AmnesiaDissociative DisordersFugueTraumaticDdnosTrauma SurvivorFugue StatePostraumatic Stress Disorder
Book:The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic
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