“A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and legs, engravings that were sometimes bad but precious in memory, and bric-a-brac. Only the eye of a connoisseur would have blazed with eagerness at the sight of this painting or that, some book yellowed with age, a piece of old porcelain, or stones and coins. But the furniture and paintings of different ages, the bric-a-brac that meant nothing to anyone but had been marked for them both by a happy hour or memorable moment, and the ocean of books and sheet music breathed a warm life that oddly stimulated the mind and aesthetic sense. Present everywhere was vigilant thought. The beauty of human effort shone here, just as the eternal beauty of nature shone all around. pp. 492-493”
“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.”
“Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story. [A Conversation with Alice Munro, BookBrowse, 1998]”
“I blushed. You haven t seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy, spotty fifteen-year-old. And because it s rarer, it sends the blusher tumbling back to that time when life felt like nothing more than one long sequence of embarrassments.”
“He was stabbed by memory, that tyrant which impinges upon our dreams and leaps at out throat as soon as we awaken.”
“Perhaps memory is a thing that everyone involved has to work at, like stitching up a big quilt out of everything that ever happened to you.”
“And anyway, the anticipation was always worse than the thing itself - the anticipation and the memory, of course. And the anticipation of the memory was maybe the worst part of all.”
“He moved on down the alley, his feet walking forward and his brain swimming backward through a sea of time. It was a dark sea, much darker than the alley. The tide was slow and there were no waves, just tiny ripples that murmured very softly. Telling him about yesterday. Telling him that yesterday could never really be discarded, it was always a part of now. There was just no way to get rid of it. No way to push it aside or throw it into an ash can, or dig a hole and bury it. For all buried memories were nothing more than slow-motion boomerangs, taking their own sweet time to come back. This one had taken seven years.”
“She has passed information to you. Figures names and facts. You have learnt nothing very much. But you have a splendid memory. It will help you when you start to learn.”
“Sometimes words just arent enough. Sometimes it s easier to magically lose yourself in the memories long past, the ones you so selfishly took for granted. And sadly sometimes that s the only way to keep those people in your life- recapturing their glorious light before they fade. And inevitably their memory along with them.”
“It s all right, Ginny. It s over. It s just a memory.”
“The gates of memory would roll open—old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death.”
“Мабуть, саме всеохопність пам яті й невідворотність спогадів і змусили людство вигадати спорт, мистецтво та анестезію.”
“I would have no need for the Memory Of Things past if those which were Present were more agreeable”
“Here s what I think: when you re born, you re assigned a brain like you re assigned a desk, a nice desk, with plenty of pigeonholes and drawers and secret compartments. At the start, it s empty, and then you spend your life filling it up. You re the only one who understands the filing system, you amass some clutter, sure, but somehow it works: you re asked the capital of Oregon, and you say Salem; you want to remember your first-grade teacher s name, and there it is, Miss Fox. Then suddenly you re old, and though everything s still in your brain, it s crammed so tight that when you try to remember the name of the guy who does the upkeep on your lawn, your first childhood crush comes fluttering out, or the persistent smell of tomato soup in a certain Des Moines neighborhood.”
“Senja yang retak. Kapalkapal berlayar membawa kenangan. Airmatamu menjelma puisi paling duri, paling angin.”
“Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible.”