c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for a story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain to herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that is the truth.
— Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
You begin with other people's memories and end up with your own.
— Marty Rubin
Thoughtful for Winter’s future sorrow,Its gloom and scarcity;Prescient to-day, of want to-morrow,Toiled quiet Memory.’Tis she that from each transient pleasureExtracts a lasting good;’Tis she that finds, in summer, treasureTo serve for winter’s food.And when Youth’s summer day is vanished,And Age brings Winter’s stress,Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,Life’s evening hours will bless.
— Charlotte Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have the past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.
— Deb Caletti
Letting go is not getting rid of memories. Memories will stay, they always do. Letting go is making sure that the pain associated with the memories goes away.
— Arti Honrao
And because when all the words of promises and memories fade, these words that are written are the only one that remain. People may change and things may happen when we least expect it to but all these written words are what will keep it all alive. Over and over again. It remains.
— Diana Rose Morcilla
Our memories and events in our lives are untidy things. We wish that we can file them away and shut the door, or wish the opposite - that they would stay forever.
— Deb Caletti, Stay
Memories are what makes each person different.
— Shannon Wiersbitzky, What Flowers Remember
Memories are't like words; they're soft and gooey. Covered with a sticky slime, like a penis after sex, or your vagina when you menstruate, and shaped like tadpoles or tiny watersnakes
— Ryū Murakami, Piercing
Memories are powerful that way. They can bring back to another place and time and make them laugh or cry all over again.
— Shannon Wiersbitzky, What Flowers Remember
Gran runs her fingers through my hair, smiling down at me. I'm to weak to reach up and trace her laugh lines, but I trace them with my eyes, thinking of all the years that have gone by between Lucy and I with Gran. All of the memories held in those lines, smiles and laughs. I am touched by the way our generations pass, one to the other, our genes the same yet slightly altered, carrying with us all of those memories.
— M. Starks, Remember Me
How many ghosts might return to the promenade, haunted by the echoes of those promises, perhaps eager to catch a glimpse of what could have been? Would they laugh at the survivors shuffling about in this briny detritus? Or would they cry?"Reid, A. J. (2012-11-08). A Smaller Hell (Kindle Locations 885-886). . Kindle Edition.
— A.J. Reid, A Smaller Hell
Good memories are meant to stay in our hearts forever... -Geena L. Davis
— Geena L. Davis
Though no longer living in silence, I continued to carry pain and memories.
— Erin Merryn, Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness
It is very strange to think back like this, although come to think of it, there is no fence or hedge round Time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
Familiar like a forgotten song from long ago that takes you back to a moment the second you hear it. And you recognize who you were. Then. And now. And you have to figure out how to reconcile the two.
— Katy Regnery, Playing for Love at Deep Haven
What kind of songs do you like? she asked."The ones that remind me of you," I said.
— Faraaz Kazi
We spend our lives in the attempt to capture memory forever
—  to capture moments
Even after three hundred maps have been handed out, Ama and I still melt the moment people switch from being suspicious that we want to sell them something--"Hey? What do you want? Money? Directions?--to realising that we just want to know their stories, their memories, what they love--"Oh, in that case, thanks, sweeties!
— Becky Cooper, Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers
Only the wool of present will knit the sweater of memories that will keep you warm in the winter of your life.
— Himanshu Chhabra
Have you ever listened to a song from a long time ago; from your past; a song that was filled with so many memories tied to it, that you felt it so deeply- that it made you cry? And did you listen to it again, intentionally, for a second time? So you could travel back in time through that song; back when everything seemed so much simpler, basic, carefree? Those are the songs that are the soundtracks of our lives… the ones that bring back childhood memories, deep feelings, snapshots of our lives (or short videos), best friends, first loves, first heartbreaks… births, deaths. Our lives are like the record albums that we used to play just a few years ago; just yesterday. We played some of the songs over and over again- to the point of which we can sing along with every word as we play it. Other songs seem somewhat unfamiliar, as we rarely go back to listen to them; we skip over them or we barely listen to the start of it before we turn off the record player. But just like on a record album and just like in our memories, you can't cut a song out off an album... just like you can't cut out a memory. The songs and memories remain there, side by side; the good ones, the bad ones, the ones that thrill us and the ones that hurt. Those are the songs that our lives are composed of. Those are the songs that we chase back, back into our our own memories in our private and personal musical time machines.
— José N. Harris, Mi Vida
You are young," replied Athos, "and your bitter memories have time to change into sweet ones.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
...filled her memory bank with shiny coins.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.
— Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air
he wished for freedom and heaven was granted to him".
— -sanika ullalkar
Memories are strange things. Withough being something I can hold in my hand, they wield a beguiling power over me. Like a mirage in the noontime heat of summer, they dance before my inner eyes and beckon me to find water where there is not water.
— Joy  Sikorski, Tamar of the Terebinths
Memories are strange things. Without being something I can hold in my hand, they wield a beguiling power over me. Like a mirage in the noontime heat of summer they dance before my inner eyes and beckon me to find water where there is no water.
— Joy Sikorski
Memories are the only thing tie us to the past
— Nourhan Mamdouh
The first real memory I have, is one of the first times I was old enough to remember being at your house. We must have been about three, maybe four. I came and sat down beside you while you were playing and it’s like, even then, you knew I wasn’t anything special because you just ignored the hell out of me.
— Melyssa Winchester, Count on Me
We are somebody’s memories when we are gone,
— Devania Annesya, X: Kenangan yang Berpulang
My life will be measured in years
—  his will be measured in memories. I'm determined that whatever time we have together will never fade from his mind.
Very soon she'll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they've got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it's a long, long line. She's one of them. I too can wait—for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie ...
— Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
You can't burn memories, Jerri. I guess you know that now.
— Geoff Herbach, Stupid Fast
Something still exists as long as there's someone still around to remember it.
— Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
If we were scars, our memories would be the stitches holding us together. You couldn't cut them apart, and if you did, it would tear you in two.""But my memories hurt," she said. "I want to forget. There's so much I just want to forget.""How are you going to do that ? Everything that's happened to you is still happening today. Once something has begun, it doesn't end. There, in your head, it never ends.
— Kai Meyer, Arkadien fällt
It's the time of our lives; let's make mistakes, not care. Let's make memories.
— Sara Rak
If you can remember me, I will be with you Today, Tomorrow and always.
— - Nirav Sanchaniya
The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.
— Agatha Christie
•	Memories are just a spark from the fire that you have in your heart from the love you have for the person you shared them with. A flash of warmth that comes with the knowledge that at that very moment life is perfect, a glimmer of hope that this happiness will last forever.
— Stephen Skolnik
Sitting alone...where we usually used to sit...n looking behind those memories ,we enjoyed together.....
— Himangshu Rabha
Put that thing down, girl. Don't you know it steals part of your soul, that little mechanical masterpiece you hold so frivolously? Don't you know it's not just mine it seals into its gears and trick mirrors, but yours, too. What you feel at this moment, what you hope for, what your dreams are, what you think your future will unfold like, it steals it all from you, too. You aren't safe just because of the side of the lens you're on. And later, when everything is said and done, and you want to forget everything that happened in these walls, when you're all alone, this picture, this piece of your soul you didn't even know was gone, will haunt you. It will come bearing knives and AKs and nine millimeters, and it will destroy you from the inside out. Put that damned thing down and stop acting like any of this is something worth remembering.
— Shannon Noelle Long, Second Coming
You will find, as you get older, that the key to being happy is being able to turn those bad memories into treasured ones. I used to cringe at the thought of you being angry with us. Now, you couldn't give me all the gold in the world to take that memory away, because it reminds me of the type of person you were and still are.
— Chris Dietzel, A Different Alchemy
....because people die but their memories not.
— M.H. Rakib, The Cavalier
In the shop, breathing the scent of dusty grease and oil; in the old house, staring into the living room where Dad and Jake used to take naps together on the couch; in the sheep barn, remembering the joy implicit in so much baaing life; in every inch of the farm, I recalled my father’s presence.
— Julene Bair, The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning
I am beginning to understand the way in which memories hold us, mindfully, to the earth, by the quality of attention paid that they require to be made at all.
— Liz Stephens, The Days Are Gods
All are failures makes us change our lives, but changes our will always be in our memories.
— Jim Jensen, Threads of Evidence
All our failures makes us change our lives, but our changes will always be in our memories.
— Jim Jensen, Threads of Evidence
Memory Lane always seems to be under reconstruction.
— John R. Dallas Jr., We Need to Have a Word: Words of Wisdom, Courage and Patience for Work, Home and Everywhere
...and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to mind with ambiguous alterations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
There were so many of these moments that could never be captured accurately, even in the camcorder, only in the heart.
— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Now I'll Tell You Everything
I hate my body Hate what it remembers. Hate what it let him do.
— Cheryl Rainfield, Stained
And years from now,you may not remember exactly what you ate.But you’ll remember who you ate with.
— Lisa Schroeder, Chasing Brooklyn
I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever’s view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: “One life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities.” Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now – no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we’re lucky) to make the most of on this earth.There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.
— Jeffrey Tayler
The death of a parent, he wrote, 'despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago...
— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
It is true that in life, precious moments my simply fly,But deep in our hearts and souls, they will never die.
— Mouloud Benzadi
Let me advise you, my dear young friend-- nay, let me warn you with all seriousness, that should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. It is old, and has many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
During the day, memories could be held at bay, but at night, dreams became the devil's own accomplices.
— Sharon Kay Penman, The Reckoning
I'm just sorry. Sorry that there won't be any more camping trips for kids or rock bands or even new books to read. No more movies or fresh bags of popcorn. It really sucks when you think about it. Of course, there is the possibility that we might be able to win this war, but not for a very long time. Probably longer than you and I will ever exist in this world.""I try not to think about it.""Sometimes it's all I ever think about.
— Jeyn Roberts, Dark Inside
RedheadAll over the houseStrands of copper hairLike filaments from a cobwebCollect.If you and IWere ever to part— For months, perhaps years,I’d be combing out,Brushing or picking upStrands of significance,Traces of youIn my life
— John Geddes
Why can't we repeat 8th grace five times and call that a high school education?
— Audrey Regan
Energetic cords are unconscious - often sentimental or compulsive - emotional ties to past and present relationships, pre-conditioned by our wounds. They are made of toxic emotions such fear, guilt, blame, hatred, obligation, grasping need or pain.
— Avril Carruthers, Freedom from Toxic Relationships: Moving On from the Family, Work, and Relationship Issues That Bring You Down
And the air--I don't know how to describe it exactly--it had that strange cool spring feeling in it, that feeling as if you remember something wonderful but you're not quite sure what it is.
— Andrew Klavan, Crazy Dangerous
If we lose all our sweet memories, it means we are dead even if we are alive!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
always the return journey to home is the sweetest, its just because we take memories home with us
— G. Adithyan
My sister and I are so close that we finish each other’s sentences and often wonder who’s memories belong to whom.
— Shannon Celebi
Let's take a walk. You can show me some of your memories and I'll show you some of mine.
— Adam Berlin, The Number of Missing
It's funny. Looking back, none of it seems to matter now, those moments of yearning, craving to belong with people I thought mattered. No more fragments of glass, pieces of a broken mirror you can't put back together and wouldn't want to even if you could.
— Rebecca Harris, Be the Death of Me
She has never tried to find out what happened to her family — her mother or her relatives in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.
— Christina Baker Kline, Orphan Train
Time made apologies and absolution unnecessary. Time didn't really heal, it just made bad memories distant so that the brain couldn't recapture the lost pain
— Amulya Malladi, A Breath of Fresh Air
Our hearts bear a similarity with storerooms. We hold in them our trampled convictions, our fears, suppressed acts of valor, disappointments, enmity, anguish, secrets, things we wish we should have done, things we wish we shouldn’t have, regret.And continue piling them up with emotions, memories, conversations which did happen and conversations which didn’t, soured relationships and bitter people all of which we should have discarded, we keep it within until there is no space left, until the room is full, occupied after which we go on to lock it. Once in a while we happen to open the room and sight the dust accumulated all over, we relive each moment, each memory and each emotion again and soon fall upon the realization as to how deeply the room is in need of cleaning and so we clean it.We clean it so that we can fill it once more, hold it, bear it, relish it, heal from it and then finally let it go.
— Chirag Tulsiani
Her tears still lay, unattended, on my bosom...I wouldn't wipe them, for she might stop paying me visits.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
And then you leave the memories behind.When you look at the pictures It seems like it was always fun. But you know thatin that photos everyone was actually broken deep down inside. Wounded. Bleeding. Crying and yelling at the same time.They were some kinda wounded birds... Eagles, wrens... When you remind that, you became some kinda phoenix. And life goes on like this.like an uncomplete poem.
— Arzum Uzun
I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories.
— Patricia Cornwell, Body of Evidence
The only reality is the now. Why live in the tomorrows and the yesterdays? Live now.
— Jill Telford
Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.
— David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
One day, I will look up and all the people I know will be dead or abroad.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
There were a story scripted on the wall, no words used though, just pictures, memories, from another world. Her happy place.
— Stine Saugmann
Old age breeds the miracle of recall. You have no short-term memory atall; you can’t remember what you did minutes ago, but you can recall with exquisite clarity what you did on your fifth birthday and how it all felt.
— Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise
I was six years old when my mother died. For a long time afterward, the sweet and earthy magnolia scent of her would permeate my dreams. No matter what I was dreaming about, good or frightening, my mother's smell would waft through my nighttime adventures, infusing them with her unseen presence, reassuring me even through their darkest moments. I never told anyone about this. I felt that, somehow, my mother had found a way to communicate with me from heaven even though I knew from the down-to-earth practicality of my Baptist Sunday School lessons that it was likely impossible. Still, I have heard it said more than once that with God, nothing is impossible. Is it so hard to imagine that He, in His infinite compassion, might have, for a moment in time, comforted a scared little girl with her mother's familiar scent?
— Earlene Fowler, Delectable Mountains
It's about quality, not quantity. It's about the memories, the bond, the love. It's about the heart.
— Shandy L. Kurth
You are not a ghost.' I was sure of that. Wherever the dreams came from, they were not really her.'Of course I am.' Amy shook her head. 'That is all memories are. Ghosts and demons kicking around upstairs.
— Kathleen Peacock
I share my happiness and sorrowCos I know for once there will be no tomorrowIf I wish to live in your memoriesI too have to be there to share your worriesSpeak up to your friend, am just a call away
— Prashant Balan
As I was standing in my kitchen cooking yesterday, a quiet task that causes my mind to begin reminiscing (similar to washing dishes, cleaning the bathrooms and mowing), I reached for the kitchen scissors and off I went. Kitchen scissors. Who knew there were special scissors to cut food items? Mom did.
— Paula Heller Garland
The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true,only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.
— Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
The sands of time cannot be stopped. Years pass whether we will them or not... but we can remember. What has been lost may yet live in memories.
— Christopher Paolini, Eragon
Try to remember some details. For the worldis filled with people who were torn from their sleepwith no one to mend the tear,and unlike wild beasts they liveeach in his lonely hiding place and they dietogether on battlefieldsand in hospitals.And the earth will swallow all of them,good and evil together, like the followers of Korah,all of them in their rebellion against death,their mouths open till the last moment,praising and cursing in a singlehowl. Try, tryto remember some details.
— Yehuda Amichai
Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something else.... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering today. This place is dear to me already. I have already two or three such places in Petersburg. I once shed tears over memories ... like you.... Who knows, perhaps you were weeping ten minutes ago over some memory.... But, forgive me, I have forgotten myself again; perhaps you have once been particularly happy here....
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights
I try to keep the happy memories. If that's what you call selective memories, I'm good with that.
— Nicole  Williams
Not all the truths are told, dreams are shattered, words are unspoken, memories are haunting but the imagination is still fighting to settle down.
— Magith Noohukhan
Not very long ago I was driving with my husband on the back roads of Grey County, which is to the north and east of Huron County. We passed a country store standing empty at a crossroads. It had old-fashioned store windows, with long narrow panes. Out in front there was a stand for gas pumps which weren't there anymore. Close beside it was a mound of sumac trees and strangling vines, into which all kinds of junk had been thrown. The sumacs jogged my memory and I looked back at the store. It seemed to me that I had been here once, and the the scene was connected with some disappointment or dismay. I knew that I had never driven this way before in my adult life and I did not think I could have come here as a child. It was too far from home. Most of our drives out of town where to my grandparents'house in Blyth--they had retired there after they sold the farm. And once a summer we drove to the lake at Goderich. But even as I was saying this to my husband I remembered the disappointment. Ice cream. Then I remembered everything--the trip my father and I had made to Muskoka in 1941, when my mother was already there, selling furs at the Pine Tree Hotel north of Gravehurst.
— Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock
Cabel felt the familiar nostalgic excitement of the endless possibilities encapsulated in a summers' night at Silver Beach. He smiled at himself as a boy and, more ruefully, at the man who now stood on the worn planks of the boardwalk. This night held no possibilities for him, though it was pleasant to remember a time when it did.
— Erin Farwell, Shadowlands
The only reason people hold onto memories is because memories are the only things that don't change, even when everyone else does.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
Even post true death memories carried on the waves of universal energy will defy the faux perception of finality.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Maybe that's why the good Lord gave us these vivid memory capabilities. When stress hits, we can just close our eyes, lean back and relax, and enjoy a game of Tidly-Winks, the sound of a Pete Rose baseball card in the spokes of our bike, or maybe a nice slice of watermelon - with a sprinkle of salt.
— Michael Buffalo Smith, Prisoner of Southern Rock: A Memoir
Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatised memories
Aching familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.
— Jenny Han, It's Not Summer Without You
I told her that saying goodbye didn't matter, not a bit. What mattered were all the days you were together before that, all the things you remembered.
— Patricia Reilly Giff, Lily's Crossing
Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.
— Lois Lowry, A Summer to Die
She didn't want to forget how deeply she had loved him, how important it had been to her; she felt as if to discard the memory would be a betrayal of her younger self.
— Harriet Evans, Happily Ever After
She said that one day they would be very old, that the world would be a different place, but it would always be their world, and that the time apart now would be a nightmare from which they would recover - desperation buried under years of happiness.
— Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness
In Paris, strolling arm in arm with a casual sweetheart through a late autumn, it seemed impossible to imagine a purer happiness than those golden afternoons, with the woody odor of chestnuts on the braziers, the languid accordions, the insatiable lovers kidding on the open terraces, and still he had told himself with his hand on his heart that he was not prepared to exchange all that for a single instant of his Caribbean in April. He was still too young to know that heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
You can spend a lifetime trying to erase memories. It doesn't change the fact that they took place. Acceptance is the key.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
However much they may smile at her, the old inhabitants would miss Tillie. Her stories give them something to talk about and to conjecture about, cut off as they are from the restless currents of the world. The many naked little sandbars which lie between Venice and the mainland, in the seemingly stagnant water of the lagoons, are made habitable and wholesome only because, every night, a foot and a half of tide creeps in from the sea and winds its fresh brine up through all that network of shining waterways. So, into all the little settlements of quiet people, tidings of what their boys and girls are doing in the world bring real refreshment; bring to the old, memories, and to the young, dreams.
— Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
When we look back into our lives we see that our life is but a collection, a collage of these moments which take the shape of images, images which lower our spirits, images which inspire, images which help us remember the people that have come along our way, touched us and silently left, images that go on to become memories and leave a lasting impression as long as we are here, as long as we are here to be.
— Chirag Tulsiani
Small moments we find so pointless can become cherished memories with time and the perspective that wisdom brings.
— Brandy Nacole, Broken Faith
Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.
— Teresa TutenAuthor
I was surprised to feel the tears running down my cheeks. Was this part of the reason fate had brought Arabella and I together all those years ago? Or was fate finally providing a way for our love to live on?
— Rose Wynters, My Wolf Protector
It is stronge how smells can bring back vivid memories.
— Mary Balogh, Web of Love
Judge me if you want, but at the end of my life I choose to have memories not regrets.
— Steve Maraboli
Remember, childhood only lasts 10-12 years. There's a lot that has to be squeezed in to make for a lifetime of happy memories. ♥
— Susan Branch
Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.
— Stephen King, Duma Key
The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history. I've always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresey. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once. The machines of the new technology, I understand, perform in much the same way: all knowledge is stored, to be summoned up at the flick of a key. They sound, in theory, more efficient. Some of my keys don't work; others demand pass-words, codes, random unlocking sequences. The collective past, curiously, provides these. It is public property, but it is also deeply private. We all look differently at it. My Victorians are not your Victorians. My seventeenth century is not yours. The voice of John Aubrey, of Darwin, of whoever you like, speaks in one tone to me, in another to you.
— Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Oft in the stilly night,Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,Fond memory brings the lightOf other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood years,The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shown Now dimmed and gone,The cheerful hearts now broken.(from When the Splendor Falls by Laurie McBain)
— Thomas   Moore
I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can't be usual to go to your favorite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
Memories leave a light in the eyes, just as plain as scars.
— Kat Richardson, Greywalker
Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.
— Ann-Marie MacDonald, The Way the Crow Flies
I don't know why they call it life, it's just a moment with memories.
— Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang
But all memories, no matter how distant, no matter how distorted, have the shadow of truth underneath. Even the most imperfect memory is a window—
— A. Lee Martinez, Divine Misfortune
It’s all I’ve seen, all I’ve been through,” I said, “that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I’ve lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it replies in kind.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night
Reflection is a good thing. It allows us to look back in time so we can connect the dots between specific memories to reveal the purpose and meaning behind synchronistic events.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
Spending moments with another in earnest presence is one of the simple ways we can show unconditional love. It is the memories created from these impressions that survive after all else passes.
— Molly Friedenfeld
They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn't care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get back my stolen memories back and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
He pulled his hand back, aware now that sweat beaded on his forehead and that Rale watched him, his eyes dark, intense. Errol licked his lips. Did he want a drink? He hadn't gone more than two days in a row without a drink since he was...since...Warrel...the quarry...stone.
— Patrick W. Carr, A Cast of Stones
I try not to remember them but very often memories force themselves on my consciousness
—  they are like stubborn relatives who invite themselves over even when you've made it clear that they are unwelcome.
I want to fill my mind with life-enhancing, positive, beautiful memories. The dark experiences can remain buried without a funeral.
— Alexandra Stoddard, The Shared Wisdom of Mothers and Daughters: The Timelessness of Simple Truths
I know you’re just a rag doll now, sewn together with memories that we might have had. I know you’re just the dream inside of a dream And don’t worry, I know I don’t know you, anymore.
— pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You
Memories, real and irreplaceable, all of them. The happy ones, the bitter ones, the terrified and the poignant.
— A.G. Howard, Splintered
Wounds heal. Scars fade. Awful memories can be overwritten with better ones if given the chance. The little imperfections of our psyches become overshadowed by the people whose love we cherish because they cherish us despite our faults; physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. This thing we call the human condition with all its bittersweet blind corners and senseless humor evolves from within ourselves and not because of some pre-ordained reverie we desire to cast in the constellations.All in all it is what makes life worth living.
— August Clearwing, Never Have I Ever
To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.
— Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain
Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?
— Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined to strengthen each other, to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories
— George Eliot
And the pomegranates,/like memories, are bittersweet/as we huddle together,/remembering just how good/life used to be
— Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Under the Mesquite
Certain moments in my life are imprinted in me memory.They're easy to recall with perfect clarity, whether I want to remember them or not. Any small thing can trigger them: a phrase, a smell, a thought. It brings everything back like I'm reliving that moment, a brief scene in the movie of my life, complete with how horrible I felt at the time. And I usually felt horrible in those moments that I want to forget that stick around.
— Elizabeth Norris, Undone
She ordered a martini and encouraged me to, but said she couldn't drink it with her medication. She just liked seeing it in front of her, like the old days, all set to do its little magic.
— Richard Ford, Canada
Night thoughts have a different color than day thoughts, a different slant, more than anything else they know all the secret paths and chinks in the armor they can take advantage of to force their way into consciousness.
— Christa Wolf, City of Angels or Overcoat of Dr. Freud
He considered razing the house and rebuilding, but he realized that houses are not haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves,our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.
— Dean Koontz, Velocity
She quickly realized she had an affinity for the older books and their muted scents of past dinners and foreign countries, the tea and chocolate stains coloring the phrases. You could never be certain what you would find in a book that has spent time with someone else. As she has rifled through the pages looking for defects, she had discovered an entrance ticket to Giverny, a receipt for thirteen bottles of champagne, a to-do list that included, along with groceries and dry cleaning, the simple reminder, 'buy a gun.' Bits of life tucked like stowaways in between the chapters. Sometimes she couldn't decide which story she was most drawn to.
— Erica Bauermeister, Joy for Beginners
It is as if people refused to leave their dead alone, forced them back into the light, made them keep their composure even in death.
— Bernhard Schlink, Homecoming
To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king’s whims. If he wants a new wife, fix him one. I didn’t, and I am dead.
— Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
If you see an old man talking to himself, he might not be a fool or crazy. He might be sharing a conversation with the past, warmed by a memory he need not reveal.
— Steven Merle Scott, Celebrate the Sinner
Moments fly, memories remain; and then memories fly, only memoirs remain and finally memoirs disappear, nothing remains!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The memories that really matter don't live in the mind.
— Jessica Brody, Unremembered
The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man
— Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists
You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for... and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you.
— Stephen King, It
It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.
— Dean Koontz, Lightning
I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.
— Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club
Judging by the photograph it seemed like I hadn’t been there at all. As if it was my camera that had been on holiday, and not me.
— Ida Løkås, Det fine som flyter forbi
I am sick of old ghosts and I just want to feel safe again without the haunts of old vulnerabilities.
— Donna Lynn Hope, Willow
Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss.... We easily forget that we are track-markers, through, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete--and these are substances not easily impressed.
— Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story.
— Carolyn Bramhall, Am I a Good Girl Yet?: Childhood Abuse Had Shattered Her. Could She Ever Be Whole?
Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken link, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a l like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper.
— John Fowles, The Magus
He will miss this quiet full of noise: the nighthawks, the way the woods breathe, the things moving unsuspected through the dark. But he will take with him the canisters full of blasted images and have the pleasure of living them again. They are not nothing, the memories.
— Lauren Groff, Arcadia
Many deeply hidden memories have come flooding back. The important message here though is that it is possible to heal and survive. Everyone has survived their own kind of emotional or mental trauma. We all have our inner fears and misreplaced feelings of guilt.
— Lynette Gould, Heart of Darkness: How I Triumphed Over a Childhood of Abuse
In our lives are special moments that live as their own, the rest is movement with the passage of time.
— Donna Lynn Hope
It is now recognised that dissociation is a way of forgetting, for a time. The mind siphons off the bad memories into a separate part, and reclaiming those hidden-away memories us a complex process. So, when the memories resurface it does not feel as though they belong to you, it feels alien, more as if someone had told them to you, or you had seen the images in a film.
— Carolyn Bramhall, Am I a Good Girl Yet?: Childhood Abuse Had Shattered Her. What Would It Take to Make Her Whole?
The past may not hurt you, but it won't challenge you, either.
— Brad Meltzer, The Inner Circle
I'll tell you this much. Men think memories are like murals or statues or truth or whatever happened, never changes none. But that ain't so. They can capture the untruth of something, just as easy. They can change, especially as time leads to time.(...)To each man himself, his memories seems as solid and factual as a stone mosaic, an urn he could turn around and heft, a flower he could sniff. But when I go inside another, I don't see it or feel it like that. Everything is shimmery, shifting, like it's bathed in mist and shadow, like... like walking down the foggiest street you can think of, with everything looking not like itself at all.
— Jeff Salyards, Scourge of the Betrayer
He thinks of the rotten parachute they played with as kids in Arcadia: they hurtle through life aging unimaginably fast, but each grasps a silken edge of memory that billows between them and softens the long fall.
— Lauren Groff, Arcadia
it felt increasingly, as I became more whole, that I had made it all up, and that I was a phoney. I had to come to some place of acceptance. If I made it all up, then I am an unspeakably evil person, leading so many wonderful, intelligent people astray. What a scheming mind I must have. I knowledge will be hard too live with. But harder still is the thought that perhaps, just perhaps it is all true; that I really was horribly, ritualistically abused in a satanic setting, over and over again and as a result my mind fragmented. The implications of that are completely overwhelming. It was me, my body, that they did those things to. No, I would rather believe I am an evil and deceitful person. At least the I can change, and say sorry, and live a better life from now on.
— Carolyn Bramhall, Am I a Good Girl Yet?: Childhood Abuse Had Shattered Her. What Would It Take to Make Her Whole?
Memories are reality's ghosts
— B.J. Neblett
Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life.
— Carolyn Bramhall, Am I a Good Girl Yet?: Childhood Abuse Had Shattered Her. What Would It Take to Make Her Whole?
You have a manure pile of memories. Nothing you can do about that. Now, you can drown in the stink, or turn it into compost and grow a garden.
— Rebecca O'Donnell, Freak: The True Story of an Insecurity Addict
Dreams are composed of many things, my son. Of images and hopes, of fears and memories. Memories of the past, and memories of the future...
— Neil Gaiman, Fables and Reflections
It's summer and time for wandering...
— Kellie Elmore, Magic in the Backyard
Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
It was like watching a movie being played on the blank screen of his mind; the only difference was that he did not get bored, no matter how many times he watched it.
— Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply
It's just this: that there are places we all come from-deep-rooty-common places- that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again-and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.
— Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
He stopped his act to take a snapshot of that instant he would so treasure- her delightful laughter that could make him do anything, anything at all, in the world and beyond!
— Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply
You can order yourself to treasure a moment, to cling tight to a feeling and never let it fade, but it’s your brain, that three-pound lump of hamburger, that makes the final call.
— Isaac Marion, Boarded Window
He got up slowly, not bothering to curse himself for forgetting the stop where he had to disembark. He was not used to leaving things behind; he wondered how the bus stop escaped.
— Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply
When we let the expectations of others or own unreasonable self-expectations rule, we silence the power of our Legacies.
— Joy E. DeKok
...we live in the same city but don't see the same things - you see buildings and I see memories...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain