remembering Quotes

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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”

“Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.”

″‘Tell Gordon we have to talk.’ ‘Sure thing, Bats. But how’s he sposed to get in touch with--oh, yeah! Now I remember...‘”

“One day one of their number would write a book about all this, but none of them would believe it, because none of them would remember it that way.”

″ People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.”

“I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.”

“She remembered walking back from there last month, half-drunk with a gaggle of half-friends from her dorm, and when one of them asked her (only half-giving a shit) where she’d planned to go for Christmas break, Darby had answered bluntly: that it would require an act of God Himself to make her come back home to Utah. And apparently He’d been listening, because He’d blessed Darby’s mother with late-stage pancreatic cancer.”

“As prayer warriors, we must remember that no matter how hopeless a situation may appear to us, God gives us power in prayer to do something about it.”

“If only I had not wondered about my sister Ulape, where she was, and if the marks she had drawn upon her cheeks had proved magical. If they had, she was now married to Nanko and was the mother of many children. She would have smiled to see all of mine, which were so different from the ones I always wished to have.”

“Papa said nothing. But he put his arm around her, and leaned over to rest his chin in her hair. I closed my eyes, suddenly remembering Mama and Papa standing that way, Mama smaller than Sarah, her hair fair against Papa’s shoulder. When I opened my eyes again, it was Sarah standing there. Caleb looked at me and smiled and smiled and smiled until he could smile no more.”

“It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.”

“Annad could not imagine the valley without the village. But Roawn could. Reading the old stories in the house of books, listening half asleep to Timon under the teaching tree, and most of all, sitting on the grass by the stream while the bukshah grazed around him in the silence of the morning, he had often imagined this place as the first settler must have seen it.”

“Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering.”

“With each gleaning I commit, with each life taken for the good of humanity, I mourn for the boy I once was, whose name I sometimes struggle to remember. And I long for a place beyond immortality where I can, in some small measure, resurrect the wonder, and be that boy again.”

“Sometimes it remembered the world’s making and cried for that long agony. Sometimes it felt anger: for a fallen tree, a dried-up pool, an intruder, or for hunger.”

“The wisest men in the world have but one opinion, and it is this. We know that Adam gave names to all the flowers created, and as this flower has remained unnamed since the days of Eden, it is doubtless one which was forgotten at the Creation, and the Lord has only just remembered to make it.”

“All his life, Randal was able to remember that scene in its every last detail, the torch making a ragged core of light in the heart of the crowding gloom, and in it, the intent faces of the two men, and their intent hands, and between them, on the magpie-chequer of the board, the two armies of fantastic shapes that marched and pranced and wavered to and fro...”

“And she remembered one thing: ‘It’s for Aunty,’ she thought. ‘and I love Aunty.‘”

“I do remember,” he said, “only Pooh doesn’t very well, so that’s why he likes having it told to him again. Because then it’s a real story and not just a remembering.”

Haydée, whose eyes were occupied in examining the theatre in search of her guardian, perceived his pale features close to Morcerf’s face. It was as if the young girl beheld the head of Medusa. She bent forwards as though to assure herself of the reality of what she saw, then, uttering a faint cry, threw herself back in her seat.

Gregor only remained close to his sister now. Unlike him, she was very fond of music and a gifted and expressive violinist, it was his secret plan to send her to the conservatory next year even though it would cause great expense that would have to be made up for in some other way. During Gregor’s short periods in town, conversation with his sister would often turn to the conservatory but it was only ever mentioned as a lovely dream that could never be realised. Their parents did not like to hear this innocent talk, but Gregor thought about it quite hard and decided he would let them know what he planned with a grand announcement of it on Christmas day. That was the sort of totally pointless thing that went through his mind in his present state, pressed upright against the door and listening. There were times when he simply became too tired to continue listening, when his head would fall wearily against the door and he would pull it up again with a start, as even the slightest noise he caused would be heard next door and they would all go silent.

“You have been my best friend except my mother; I hope you won’t forget me.”

“You’ve been mighty good to me, boys—better’n anybody else in this town. And I don’t forget it, I don’t. Often I says to myself, says I, ‘I used to mend all the boys’ kites and things, and show ‘em where the good fishin’ places was, and befriend ‘em what I could, and now they’ve all forgot old Muff when he’s in trouble; but Tom don’t, and Huck don’t—_they_ don’t forget him,’ says I, ‘and I don’t forget them.‘”