He could swear he did not look back, could not-by any optical chance, or in any prism-have seen her physically as he walked away; and yet, with dreadful distinction, he retained forever a composite...

But then what does it matter whence comes the gentle nudge that jars the soul into motion and sets it rolling, doomed never again to stop?

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident {picnic, lightning} when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of...

I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.

She is a rarer creature than you dare to dream. She is a myth, a memory, a will-o'-the-wish.

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.

They, like me, like all of us, had, once upon a time, in a past so far away it seemed like heaven, caught by chance a glimpse of an inner essence, only to forget what it was. It was this lost memory...

Remembering the past always comes with an image or a view attached.

In general the assumption of all of us, child or adult, was that this was a new country and that a new country had no history. History was something that applied to other places.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

Still, he was pleased to know that he could recall so much of the play and passed the rest of the journey pleasantly in reciting lines to himself, being careful not to snort.

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there. He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him. It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he'd landed and made...

The ants Geiser recently observed under a dripping fir tree are not concerned with what anyone might know about them; nor were the dinosaurs, which died out before a human being set eyes on them. All...

When we study, discuss, analyze a reality, we analyze it as it appears in our mind, in our memory. We know reality only in the past tense. We do not know it as it is in the present, in the moment when...

He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no...

Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time,...

The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

{W}e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

That's why I'm changing my way and my grooves for now. I always felt that the really strange story was happening in my life, and it was very important to record everything. Does that mean that was...

The fact is that I hate this city. I've hated it so long I can hardly remember feeling any other way about it.

He remembered Apollo, smiling and tanned and completely cool in his shades. Thalia had said, He's hot. He's the sun god, Percy replied. That's not what I meant. Why was Nico thinking about that now?...

When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.

{"What is the most real thing you can think of?"}Jacques thought for a long time before answering; he tried to weigh up what was most vital and enduring in all that he had known. Eventually, no longer...

He would come to feel that history, even more than memory, distorts the present of the past by focusing on big events and making one forget that most people living in the present are otherwise...