“Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed.”
“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”
“I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.
It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.”
“The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in.”
“Forgetfulness, too, causes anger, as when our own names are forgotten, trifling as this may be; since forgetfulness is felt to be another sign that we are being slighted; it is due to negligence, and to neglect us is to slight us.”
“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”
“I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory.”
“And on my life I would never suggest to you that stories cannot be forgotten in the bone, even when a brother or a wizard or a rifle says you must, you must forget it, it never happened; there is only the world as it is now, and there has never been another, can never be any other.”
“I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”
“Soon she would be forgotten and ignored, dismissed as a swot or as too stuck up to bother with. That was painful sometimes, but it was easier than having to pretend to be like everyone else.”
“They did not find Sarah-Ann, but Ted found a watch that he’d mended then forgotten about. ‘That’s Miss Hubbard’s,’ he said. ‘She brought it to be fettled, last Christmas. Could you take it along for her, Pat? She’ll be needing it.’ “
“You will have to arrange things so I can go for a run. My legs are growing shorter, I am sure, with not exercising them. I shall have forgotten how to walk by the end of the week.”
A day in the 1990s. Chernobyl is almost forgotten when an accident occurs at the atomic plant in Grafenrheinfeld not far from Schweinfurt. Germany has its own atomic disaster.
“What a day it was! There was so many letters to be read, so many of the world’s doings to be caught up with. That night as they sat about the fire, even nuts and candle lighters were forgotten.”