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Memory Quotes

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Memory Quotes

“Dissociation, in a general sense, refers to a rigid separation of parts of experiences, including somatic experiences, consciousness, affects, perception, identity, and memory. When there is a structural dissociation, each of the dissociated self-states has at least a rudimentary sense of "I" (Van der Hart et al., 2004). In my view, all of the environmentally based "psychopathology" or problems in living can be seen through this lens.”

PsychologyChildhoodIdentityPersonalityDepressionPerceptionMemoryTraumaChild AbuseDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderDissociativeMpdAltersParts
Book:The Dissociative Mind
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“Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact. But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.”

PsychologyAbuseMental HealthMemoryTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorChild AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDiagnosisDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMultiple Personality DisorderIncestPsychiatricMental Health StigmaAbusive ParentsPedophilesDidChild Range
Book:First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
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“Memory requires active engagement with the complexities of the past. It is not an unthinking or passive process, like breathing or (for most people) sleeping. I have found that good memory, like good history, requires disciplined and focused attention, an honest effort to overcome one's perceptual and cognitive biases, and sustained effort.”

HistoryPsychologyMemory
Book:Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
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“In an essay, clinical psychologist David Elkins highlights the transformative element of awe. He describes moments of awe as "the most important, transformative experiences of life… Awe is a lightning bolt that marks in memory those moments when the doors of perception are cleansed and we see with startling clarity what is truly important in life.”

LifeImportantClearPerceptionExperienceMemoryAweMomentTransform
Book:The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day
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“Living on is the memory of a horse who was hitched to a plow but wanted to soar. Snowman and Harry showed the world how extraordinary the most ordinary among us can be. Never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.”

PossibilityExtraordinaryMemoryObstaclesSoar
Book:The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation
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“Butterflies would float up from our eyelashes. The butterflies would turn from white cocoons to purple-winged creatures. The air would become purple, and all of a sudden, the butterflies would etch their shadows across the ceiling. They would swarm into my brain and suck out every memory of us that I have. Then, I would be left with this one moment of us in this room, replaying itself like a still film frame over and over again.”

MemoryButterflies
Book:The Butterfly Bruises
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“This time of year, the purple blooms were busy with life- not just the bees, but butterflies and ladybugs, skippers and emerald-toned beetles, flitting hummingbirds and sapphire dragonflies. The sun-warmed sweet haze of the blossoms filled the air. "When I was a kid," said Isabel, "I used to capture butterflies, but I was afraid of the bees. I'm getting over that, though." The bees softly rose and hovered over the flowers, their steady hum oddly soothing. The quiet buzzing was the soundtrack of her girlhood summers. Even now, she could close her eyes and remember her walks with Bubbie, and how they would net a monarch or swallowtail butterfly, studying the creature in a big clear jar before setting it free again. They always set them free. As she watched the activity in the hedge, a memory floated up from the past- Bubbie, gently explaining to Isabel why they needed to open the jar. "No creature should ever be trapped against its will," she used to say. "It will ruin itself, just trying to escape." As a survivor of a concentration camp, Bubbie only ever spoke of the experience in the most oblique of terms.”

MemoryBeesFlowersInsectsButterfliesSummertimeNature S BeautyIsabel JohansenBubbieMagnus JohansenEva Johansen
Book:The Beekeeper's Ball
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“It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them.”

LoveForgetAgingMemorySelfishnessMelancholyLetter
Author:George Sand
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“There were never strawberries like the ones we had that sultry afternoon sitting on the step of the open french window facing each other your knees held in mine the blue plates in our laps the strawberries glistening in the hot sunlight we dipped them in sugar looking at each other not hurrying the feast for one to come the empty plates laid on the stone together with the two forks crossed and I bent towards you sweet in that air in my arms abandoned like a child from your eager mouth the taste of strawberries in my memory lean back again let me love you let the sun beat on our forgetfulness one hour of all the heat intense and summer lightning on the Kilpatrick hills let the storm wash the plates.”

LoversSummerPerfectionMemoryCommunionScotlandMomentBittersweetStrawberriesPast Love
Book:The Second Life: Selected Poems
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“Ένα καλοκαίρι στην παραλία, όταν ήμουν δέκα ή έντεκα χρονών, είχα εξ’ αποστάσεως λατρέψει μια συνομήλικη μου καστανόξανθη καλλονή – υπάρχει, όμως, κανείς που, μες στη μελένια αχλή της παιδικής ηλικίας να μη λάτρεψε στην παραλία μια καστανόξανθη καλλονή;”

ChildhoodSummerMemory
Book:Ancient Light
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“Mother Marrow gestures to the soup, and I, who can afford no more enemies, bring it to my lips. It tastes of a memory I cannot quite place, warm afternoons and splashing in pools and kicking plastic toys across the brown grass of summer lawns. Tears spring to my eyes. I want to spill it out in to the dirt. I want to drink it down to the dregs.”

MemoriesSummerMemoryHolly BlackSoupThe Folk Of The AirJude DuarteJudeThe Wicked KingMother Marrow
Book:The Wicked King
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“Their house was about a mile outside of town. The kids would play outdoors, in the backyard and the large stubble field behind the house. Dusk seemed to last for hours, and when it was finally dark they would sit under the porch light, catching thickly buzzing June bugs and moths, or even an occasional toad who hopped into the circle of light, tempted by the halo of insects that floated around the bare orange lightbulb next to the front door”

SummerMemoryNostalgia
Book:Ill Will
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“What I'm feeling, I think, is joy. And it's been some time since I've felt that blinkered rush of happiness, This might be one of those rare events that lasts, one that'll be remembered and recalled as months and years wind and ravel. One of those sweet, significant moments that leaves a footprint in your mind. A photograph couldn't ever tell its story. It's like something you have to live to understand. One of those freak collisions of fizzing meteors and looming celestial bodies and floating debris and one single beautiful red ball that bursts into your life and through your body like an enormous firework. Where things shift into focus for a moment, and everything makes sense. And it becomes one of those things inside you, a pearl among sludge, one of those big exaggerated memories you can invoke at any moment to peel away a little layer of how you felt, like a lick of ice cream. The flavor of grace.”

LifeHappinessMemoryCraig SilveyJasper Jones
Book:Jasper Jones
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“All she captures is a moment and what she calls it is a memory, Sometimes, it is assumptions that we use; all we need is a theory, Because you don’t know what is there in the future, And all you need is a vision to make a perfect picture. I feel that I have known you for a century, And whatever she calls is a memory.”

LoveLifeInspirationalMotivationalInspirational QuotesPoetryLove QuotesSadnessCenturyFutureDeterminationPerseveranceMemoryStorytellingPoetry QuotesLife Lessons QuotesRemorseMomentPoetry LoveAssumptionsPictureThe Papery OnionsThepaperyonions
Book:The Papery Onions
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“Memory in the mind of man can adapt to the worst conditions. I'll give you an example, an analogy of sorts: Each night I sop rags with beer and lay them out in careful strips. With rags soaked in beer I tease cockroaches from a crack in the baseboard. By morning they're good and drunk and I pop them into a baggy, then take them outside and throw the little buggers away.”

WritingMemoryRemorseCockroachesThurber
Book:Nothing But Trouble
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“Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room with a full heart. It was as a shrine to her. Here her mother had dreamed the exquisite, happy dreams of anticipated motherhood; here that red sunrise light had fallen over both of them in the sacred hour of birth; here her mother had died. Anne looked about her reverently, her eyes dim with tears. It was for her one of the jewelled hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory.”

DeathMotherDaughterMemoryMotherhoodMourningSunriseAnneofgreengables
Book:Anne of the Island
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“Paul and I sat in lawn chairs in my yard, and usually we could cheer each other up by talking about Billy. It was September 1993, and he had been gone four months. We had started the thing you do, where you collect the stories you'll tell over and over again. You begin to polish the edges of a memory--something funny he said or a specific performance--until the edges are smoothed and the story is comforting.”

LoveComfortMemoryMourning
Book:All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South
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“Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman. Founded on fact, no doubt. I shall put in nothing fictitious (or I hope I shan't). But won't the composition inevitably become more and more my own? The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly, by being so thoroughly herself and not me.”

RealityLossGriefPersonalityMemoryMourning
Book:A Grief Observed
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“Я не принимал участие ни в каких торжественных мероприятиях [14.10.2016], ни в каких шествиях, парадах. Кстати, мне очень непонятно, чего это вдруг парад "Азова" ― это "парад патриотов"? Тогда парад "Свободы" ― это парад кого... барабанов? Я не пошел ни туда, ни сюда, а вместе со своей семьей сегодня поехал по кладбищам, где похоронены пацаны. Я не патриот? Я разговаривал с семьей на Лесном кладбище, где похоронен боец "Азова" с позывным "Вальтер". Я стоял с его вдовой, с его дочерью, с его братом и женой брата. И никого там больше не было. Ни барабанов, ни факелов. Там вообще никого не было.”

WarDeathMemoryMourningCelebrationUkraineCemeteryCommemoration
Author:Георгий Тука
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“Sometimes we are written down in books. Or, someone tells a story in which our name figures. And so we live on, through someone else’s voice… These are the indelible marks others make of us, like the watermarks of high tides, names carved into barks, or stamps branded onto belongings. For what else is history but the collected voices of others, who sing a chorus of what once was. It is not words but voices that are the inscriptions seared onto pages, into minds, of the fragments others glean, as we live our lives in passing. Flitting and fl eeting, we rub off as we move through, and in our wake is cast the dust of the stars that we become. And sometimes it is caught on the fingers of others, and they press that gold to their lips, where it glistens, an eternal testimony to the fact that they adored us: So we, those of us who remember, we grow more golden as we age, as if cast into statues that commemorate the splendor of those who loved us, and those we were privileged to love.”

LoveMemoryMourning
Book:The Westhampton Leisure Hour and Supper Club
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“I have more than once tried to analyse this apparently deliberate form of self-torture that seems common to so many people in face of the extinction of a valued life, human or animal, and it springs, I think, from a negation of death, as if by summoning and arranging these subjective images one were in some way cheating the objective fact. It is, I believe, an entirely instinctive process, and the distress it brings with it is an incidental, a by-product, rather than a masochistic end.”

DeathGriefMemoryMourning
Book:Ring of Bright Water
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“Time is ungovernable, but grief presents us with a choice: what do we do with the savage energies of bereavement? What do we do with the memory - or in the memory - of the beloved? Some commemorate love with statuary, but behavior, too, is a memorial, as is a well-lived life. In death, there is always the promise of hope. The key is opening, rather than numbing, ourselves to pain. Above all, we must show our children how to celebrate existence in all its beauty, and how to get up after life has knocked us down, time and again. Half-dead, we stand. And together, we salute love. Because in the end, that's all that matters. How hard we loved, and how hard we tried.”

LoveDeathLossDepressionSuicideMemoryMourningBereavementGrief Inspirational
Book:The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide
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“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
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“... I believe in some sense much akin to the belief of faith, that I noticed, felt, or underwent what I describe—but it may be that the only reason childhood memories act on us so strongly is that, being the most remote we possess, they are the worst remembered and so offer the least resistance to that process by which we mold them nearer and nearer to an ideal which is fundamentally artistic, or at least nonfactual; so it may be that some of these events I describe never occurred at all, but only should have, and that others had not the shades and flavors—for example, of jealousy or antiquity or shame—that I have later unconsciously chosen to give them...”

MemoriesChildhoodMemoryUnreliable Narrator
Book:Peace
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“Det är en natt med strålande sol. Jag står i den täta skogen och ser bort mot mitt hus med sina disblåa väggar. Som om jag vore nyligen död och såg huset från en ny vinkel. Det har stått mer än åtti somrar. Dess trä är impregnerat med fyra gånger glädje och tre gånger sorg. När någon som bott i huset dör målas det om. Den döda personen målar själv, utan pensel, inifrån. På andra sidan är det öppen terräng. Förr en trädgård, nu förvildad. Stillastående brottsjöar av ogräs, pagoder av ogräs, framvällande text, uppsnärjdare av ogräs, en vikingaflotta av ogräs, drakhuvuden, lansar, ett ogräs-imperium! Över den förvildade trädgården flaxar skuggan av en bumerang som kastas gång på gång. Det har samband med en som bodde i huset långt före min tid. Nästan ett barn. En impuls utgår från honom, en tanke, en viljetanke: »skapa . . . rita . . .« för att hinna ut ur sitt öde. Huset liknar en barnteckning. En ställföreträdande barnslighet som växte fram därför att någon alltför tidigt avsade sig uppdraget att vara barn. Öppna dörren, stig in! Här inne är oro i taket och fred i väggarna. Över sängen hänger ett amatörsegel, föreställande ett skepp med sjutton segel, fräsande vågkammar och en vind som den förgyllda ramen inte kan hejda. Det är alltid så tidigt här inne, det är före vägskälen, före de oåterkalleliga valen. Tack för det här livet! Ändå saknar jag alternativen. Alla skisser vill bli verkliga. En motor på vattnet långt borta tänjer ut sommarnattens horisont. Både glädje och sorg sväller i daggens förstoringsglas. Vi vet det egentligen inte, men anar det: det finns ett systerliv till vårt liv, som går en helt annan trad. Medan solen brinner bakom öarna.”

ChildhoodMemoryParallel Lives
Author:Tomas Tranströmer
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