remembering Quotes

“Every pound of granite, every begonia blossom, Charlie thought, was proof of the enduring human need to be remembered.”

“As for me, my thoughts were made up of remembrances, and they carried me up to the surface of the globe which I ought never to have taken leave.”

“When I saw him many things I thought I had forgotten came flooding back to me. This was because I had begun, finally, to wonder about Sonny, about the life that Sonny lived inside.”

“Sometimes he wished he had no ambitions—often wondered where they had come from in his life, because he remembered how satisfied he had been as a youngster, and that with the little he had—a dog, a stick, an aloneness he loved.”

“A small part of my mind remembered an alternate pattern of events and then lost it, as if I had woken from a comfortable sleep and looked around, pulled the bedclothes over me, and returned to my dream.”

“What you remembered? Probably. More or less. Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not.”

“Lettie Hempstock’s ocean. I remembered that, and remembering that, I remembered everything.”

“I want to remember . . . Because it happened to me. And I’m still me.”

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.”

“Everything I found in books that pleased me I retained in my memory, consciously or unconsciously, and adapted it.”

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol [...] slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive.”

“This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter.”

“We have to remember everything. If we don’t, by the time we grow up it’ll be gone forever.”

“‘You can go to the rock, Cyril….’ That was what murder was—as easy as that! But afterwards you went on remembering….”

“I think the Selection was meant to draw us together and remind everyone that Illéa itself was born out of next to nothing.”

“To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you.”

“Except later it was Freak who taught me that remembering is a great invention of the mind, and if you try hard enough you can remember anything, whether it happened or not.”

“And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?”

“In profile, he could see both the young woman she was becoming and the little girl he remembered.”

“No – I remember her perfectly now. Her hands shook so that she couldn’t hit the right keys! The first time we gave a speed test, she broke down completely – was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the wash room! After that morning she never showed up anymore. We phoned the house but never got any answer.”

“It all came flooding back to him now—swaying and humming along with the prayers, craning his neck to see the Torah when it was taken out of the ark and hoping to get a chance to touch it and then kiss his fingers as the scroll came around in a procession. Josef felt his skin tingle. The Nazis had taken all this from them, from him, and now he and the passengers on the ship were taking it back.”

“Her neck scars are a road map, too, aren’t they? Places she’s been best not to remember”