Quotes
Ghosts, I was thinking, memories—I wasn’t sure there was a difference.
p. 97
I know about death…Our country is haunted by its dead, weighed down by loss and remembrance.
She does not want to remember but she is here and memory is gathering bones.
Here is the truth he wants to ignore: that what is forged into memory tucks itself into bone and muscle. It will always be there and it will follow us to the grave.
a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.
...all of them had tried to forget it. They did not talk about it; they never mentioned it. But it lingered, like a bad smell. It had suffused them so deeply it could never wash out. (chapter six, p124)
It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales. (p271)
The good old days always seemed better in distant memory than they had actually been at the time.
Noticing and thinking are sometimes a strain and a bafflement and I wonder if the Designers were aware of that when they made it almost impossible for the ordinary citizen to make use of a recorder. Or when they had us all taught that earliest learned wisdom: “When in doubt, forget it.”
p. 22
"Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment," she said, thrusting a skinny back of her hand before my eyes, "most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
The song is over. But the melody lingers on.
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."
