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Memory Quotes

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Memory Quotes

“Your memory feels like home to me. So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you.”

“I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget... one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll, — oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began... How handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! What an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! How pale those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of color, how blinding they were in the delivery! It was a great night, a memorable night. I doubt if America has seen anything quite equal to it. I am well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal again... Bob Ingersoll’s music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I shall always see him, as he stood that night on a dinner-table, under the flash of lights and banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature that ever lived... You should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; you should have heard the hurricane that followed. That's the only test! People might shout, clap their hands, stamp, wave their napkins, but none but the master can make them get up on their feet. {Twain's letter to his wife, Livy, about friend Robert Ingersoll's incredible speech at 'The Grand Banquet', considered to be one of the greatest oratory performances of all time}”

“It wasn’t heartbreak. It wasn’t betrayal. It was the slow death of something that could’ve mattered, if the world hadn’t gotten to him first.”

“The Lottery by Stewart Stafford It was New York, 1984, The AIDS tsunami roared in, Friends, old overnight, no more, Breathless, I went for a check-up. A freezing winter's dawn, A solitary figure before me, What we called a drag queen, White heels trembled in the cold. "Hi, are you here to get tested?" Gum chewed, brown eyes stared. This was not my type of person, I turned heel and walked away. At month's end, a crippling flu, The grey testing centre called, Two hundred people ahead of me; A waking nightmare all too real. I gave up and turned to leave, But a familiar voice called out: "Hey, you there, come back!" I stopped and turned around. The drag queen stood there in furs, But sicker, I didn't recognise them, "Stand with me in the line, honey." "Nah, I'm fine, I'll come back again." "Support an old broad before she faints?" A voice no longer frail but pin-sharp. I got in line to impatient murmurs: "If anyone has a problem, see me!" Sylvester on boombox, graveyard choir. My pal's stage name was Carol DaRaunch, (After the Ted Bundy female survivor) Their real name was Ernesto Rodriguez. After seeing the doctor, Carol hugged me, Writing down their number on some paper, With their alias not their real name on it: "Is this the number of where you work?" "THAT is my home number to call me on. THAT'S my autograph, for when I'm famous!" "I was wrong about you, Carol," I said. "Baby, it takes time to get to know me!" A hug, shimmy, the threadbare blonde left. A silent chorus of shuffling dead men walking, Spartan results, a young man's death sentence. Real words faded rehearsal, my eyes watered. Two weeks on, I cautiously phoned up Carol. The receiver was picked up, dragging sounds, Like furniture being moved: "Is Carol there?" "That person is dead." They hung up on me. All my life's harsh judgements, dumped on Carol, Who was I to win life's lottery over a guardian angel? I still keep that old phone number forty years on, Crumpled, faded, portable guilt lives on in my wallet. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”

“By the end of that semester of free therapy, I was very tired of talking about myself. I was tired of myself. Each week I dutifully showed up, because I was supposed to, and relitigated whatever I had talked about the previous week. Replaying the details of that night demystified it, at least in terms of my involvement. More accurately, noninvolvement, because how could it have ended any differently? That was just the historian trying to wedge himself into a story that was not his. Talking so much did nothing to lessen the fact that I missed you, and that I could now periodize different eras of that feeling. I miss missing you circa Oct 98, I wrote in my journal. I miss not watching my back, I miss going out for dinner at night, I miss your balcony and cultivating minor league tobacco habits. I missed that feeling of having once known exactly what to say. That feeling of writing a series of perfect sentences. In a sense, I was still, years later, stepping down from the podium at the funeral home, shuffling slowly back to my seat in the pews between Anthony and Sean. But this was exactly why Derrida resisted the eulogy form. It’s always about “me” rather than “we,” the speaker burnishing his emotional credentials rather than offering a true account of the deceased.”

“Believe me when I tell you this. It will just take a little time and you will one day find that all your loves have merged together. You will be surprised because you will find yourself laughing or smiling over a memory of me and that’s when you will know that your tears will soon subside. I want you to be free to love again and to be happy when you are reminded of me! You’ll get there, you’ll see, and it will be sweet and beautiful with a few sentimental tears now and again for all the loves you have had.”