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Your capacity for memory is a great human gift … 

• The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days. Sue Monk Kidd
• Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.  Pierce Harris
• I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect. Alex Grey
• Memory is more incredible than ink. Anita Loos
• The past,  Nostalgia,  Reflection,  Consciousness,  Letting go,  The mind

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… a kind of additional “sense” through which we perceive our world 

• All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end. Neil Gaiman
• Perception

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Memories are our our links to the past … 

• The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess. Chris Cobbs
• Remembering is mental time travel. Endel Tulving
• I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory. Sam Savage
• With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams. Jeremy Irons
• In memory’s telephoto lens, far objects are magnified. John Updike
• The past

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… our own private dairy 

• Every man’s memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxley
• .. is the diary that we all carry about with us. Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest”
• Memory is the personal journalism of the soul. Richard Schickel

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Memories allow transient moments of happiness to endure for a life time 

• Fish come and go, but it is the memory of afternoons on the stream that endure. Donnall Thomas
• Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. Jean de Boufflers
• We remember moments, not days We do not remember days; we remember moments. Cesare Pavese
• In a person’s lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart. Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
• A moment lasts all of a second, but the memory lives on forever.
• There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook. David Benioff
• On the highway of life, we most often recognize happiness out of the rear-view mirror. Frank Tyger
• Happiness

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Memory inspires us and feeds our imagination 

• The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience – anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form. Carol Ann Duffy
• The mind needs stimulation. Your sensory input gets stored in memory. By giving your mind fresh inputs each day, your memories get triggered and combined with the new input. Sometimes you will get ideas or gain new perspectives. Charles Cave
• My greatest inspiration is memory. Paul Theroux
• Memory feeds imagination. Amy Tan
• Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Ned Rorem
• There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. Josh Billings
• Imagination

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The memories of shared experiences connect us deeply to others 

• What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? George Eliot
• The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods. Bill Cosby  
• Memories aren’t stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people. Jodi Picoult
• Connection

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Happy memories are a form of true wealth that cannot be taken away 

• Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. The Wonder Years
• A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. Alexander Smith 
• Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it. M. Montgomery
• The only real treasure is in your head. Memories are better than diamonds and nobody can steal them from you. Rodman Philbrick
• Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always. Gary Jennings
• Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Memory is the treasure house of the mind wherein the monuments thereof are kept and preserved. Thomas Fuller
• True wealth

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Memory is the receptacle of wisdom and knowledge  

• Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future. Elie Wiesel
• Memory is the mother of all wisdom. Aeschylus
• We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures. Samuel Johnson
• Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker. Bram Stoker
• Memory is the receptacle and sheath of all knowledge. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Memory is the library of the mind. Francis Fauvel-Gourand
• Wisdom,  Knowledge

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Some argue that the very purpose of life is to create enriching memories 

• It is not the destination where you end up but the mishaps and memories you create along the way! Penelope Riley
• I want to experience as many different tastes, sights, emotions, conflicts, and cultures as possible, so that I can expand the canvas of my memory and enrich my comedy. Patton Oswalt
• Each of us has a bank account of time, into which a deposit is made and withdrawals are taken. No matter how depleted that account was at the end of yesterday, today it is chock- full of moments to cherish, memories to make, and minute after minute to spend wisely or not. Michael Rawls
• A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves.  A man’s age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.  Antoine de Saint- Exupéry
• I think immortality is the passing of a soul through many lives or experiences, and such as are truly lived, used and learned, help on to the next, each growing richer, happier and higher, carrying with it only the real memories of what has gone before. Louisa May Alcott
• I think the only answer is to live life to the fullest while you can and collect memories like fools collect money. Because in the end, that’s all you have – happy memories. Sarah Strohmeyer
• The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten. Cesare Pavese
• Purpose

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Memories allow those we love to live on after they die … 

• Mourning is one of the most profound human experiences that it is possible to have… The deep capacity to weep for the loss of a loved one and to continue to treasure the memory of that loss is one of our noblest human traits. Shneidman
• Grieving involves confronting the totality of our relationship with the person, along with all of our many and conflicting feelings; holding onto the good memories and joyful moments, grieving for what was and what wasn’t and what could never be. Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. 
• Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us. Brian Jacques
• A resolve to honor the memory of the person and bring aspects of their good character and qualities into one’s own life helps to heal the pain. Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. 
• Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them. Mitch Albom
• People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. Haruki Murakami
• The heart that truly loves never forgets. Proverb
• Love lost is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end. Love doesn’t. Mitch Albom
• Death

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… and allow us to live on in the mind of others after we pass away 

• To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. Thomas Campbell
• The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they’ve died. They’re like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they’re made out of the memories people have of you. R.J. Palacio
• One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. Antonio Porchia
• No one ever really dies as long as they took the time to leave us with fond memories. Chris Sorensen
• Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. From a headstone in Ireland
• If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions. David Levithan
• The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living. Cicero
• Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist. Guy de Maupassant

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We only really die when the memories of us fade away altogether 

• Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken? Terry Pratchett
• I mean they say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.  Banksy

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Seek out your happy memories … 

• Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank. Let the others fade away. And your confidence, that feeling of being on top of the world, will zoom upward. You take a big step forward toward conquering your fear when you refuse to remember negative, self- deprecating thoughts. David J. Schwartz
• Seek out lovely memories, feelings, or ideas. Hunt for beauty like a child looking for seashells on a bountiful beach. Be open to things outside the frame of “nice” or “pretty.” Let yourself be surprised. Find beauty in unexpected places. Rick Hanson

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… being selective … 

• Choose carefully. Memories are all we end up with.  At least, pick the nice ones. Juan José Campanella
• If you can look back on your life with contentment, you have one of man’s most precious gifts — a selective memory.
• We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison. Marcel Proust

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… and then savour them like a fine wine 

• Hmmm, how to “can a day?” You know, those days that seem just perfect you want access to them whenever the need arises.  Jeb Dickerson
• Good days are to be gathered like grapes, to be trodden and bottled into wine and kept for age to sip at ease beside the fire. If the traveler has vintaged well, he need trouble to wander no longer; the ruby moments glow in his glass at will. Freya Stark
• A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered. C. S. Lewis
• We all have our ‘good old days’ tucked away inside our hearts, and we return to them in daydreams like cats to favorite armchairs. Brian Carter
• Now that I have opened that bottle of memories they’re pouring out like wine, crimson and bittersweet. Ellen Hopkins
• Sometimes I wanted to take a memory – one perfect memory – curl up in it and go to sleep. Kiersten White
• Nostalgia

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Transform your happy memories into joy through gratitude 

• Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind. Lionel Hampton
• Gratitude is the memory of the heart. French Proverb
• Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Gratitude

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Tend to your happy memories like a garden 

• Memories are like a garden. Regularly tend the pleasant blossoms and remove the invasive weeds. Linda Fifer Ralphs
• That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it. Elie Wiesel
• Life is like gardening or farming

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Water your memories of past successes 

• Because self-confidence is built on memories of past successes, recalling these experiences will help you to feel self- confident towards achieving new goals.  Vic Johnson

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Water the memories of your past dreams 

• Buried under the years and experiences of your life is a memory of a dream, a forgotten wanting, a simple whim. Capture the memory once again and make it a reality.  Stephen Covey
• Memories are the stars that brighten our dreams. Sharon Repp
• Dreams

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Recalling happy memories lets you relive good times 

• To be able to look back on one’s life in satisfaction is to live twice. Khalil Gibran

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Recalling happy memories allows you to shift negative emotions 

• Make a list of some Secret Shifters to have up your sleeve. Things that can change your feelings in a snap. It might be beautiful memories, future events, funny moments, nature, a person you love, your favorite music. Then if you find yourself angry or frustrated or not feeling good, turn to your Secret Shifters list and focus on one of them. The Secret
• Mood,  Emotion

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Recalling happy memories can make you happier and more resilient 

• Studies show that those proficient at reminiscing about the past – looking back on happy times, rekindling joy from happy memories – are best able to buffer stress.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Replay happy days. The practice of repetitively replaying your happiest life events serves to prolong and reinforce positive emotions and make you happier.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Fond memory brings the light of other days around me. Thomas Moore
• Happiness,  Resilience

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Recalling happy memories can sustain you in hard times … 

• Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories. From the movie An Affair to Remember, written by Delmer Daves
• God gave us memories that we might have roses in December. J.M. Barrie
• Adversity,  Challenge

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… and also in your old age 

• Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age. Booth Tarkington
• Live a good, honorable life. Then, when you are older, you can look back and enjoy it a second time.  Dalia Lama
• Old folks live on memory, young folk live on hope. Gayla Reid
• Old age is when your memory is shorter and your stories are longer.
• Observation is an old man’s memory. Jonathan Swift
• The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime. Pink Floyd
• Youth lives on hope, old age on remembrance. French Proverb
• Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years. Charlotte Bronte
• Getting older gracefully

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Recalling happy memories can refresh you 

• To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward. Margaret

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Happy memories can warm you, but painful memories can tear you apart … 

• Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. Haruki Murakami
• Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces. Richard Kadrey
• The world shrieks and sinks talons into our hearts. This we call memory. Tim O’Brien
• I could tell you it’s the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets. Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• It didn’t take tragedy or war to derail a man. It took only a memory. Ali Shaw
• Memory is man’s greatest friend and worst enemy. Gilbert Parker
• The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings. Pittacus Lore
• As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape. John Lancaster

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… especially those memories full of regret and loss 

• It’s regrets that make painful memories. Mark Vonnegut
• Loss alone is but the wounding of a heart; it is memory that makes it our ruin. Brian Ruckley
• Sadness is always the legacy of the past; regrets are pains of the memory.
• How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering. Charles Baudelaire
• Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had…. Mignon McLaughlin
• Regret,  Loss

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Painful memories can haunt 

• One need not be a chamber to be haunted; One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place. Emily Dickinson
• Recalling days of sadness, memories haunt me. Recalling days of happiness, I haunt my memories.  Robert Brault

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Painful memories can darken the mood and even lead to depression 

• Identify your feelings and moods. Depression is a self-destructive effort to avoid feeling. Accept that emotions are natural and helpful. Learn that mood changes don’t come “out of the blue” — they are always started by an event, a memory, a dream. Identify what starts your mood changes. Richard O’Connor
• Mood,  Depression,  Sadness

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Painful memories tend to stick in the mind like teflon … 

• In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. That shades implicit memory—your underlying feelings, expectations, beliefs, inclinations, and mood—in an increasingly negative direction. Rick Hanson
• Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it. Michel de Montaigne
• The worst memories stick with us, while the nice ones always seem to slip through our fingers. Rachel Vincent
• Unhappy memories are persistent. They’re specific, and it’s the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy. But the memory of something painful does just the opposite. It retains its original shape, all bony fingers and pointy elbows. Every time it returns, you get a quick poke in the eye or jab in the stomach. The memory of being unhappy has the power to hurt us long after the fact. We feel the injury anew each and every time we think of it. Cameron Dokey

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… no matter how much we try to forget them 

• People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things – where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance – but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget… There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living. Stephen Carpenter
• Remembering is easy. It’s forgetting that’s hard. Brodi Ashton
• You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget. Cormac McCarthy
• When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot. Ann Brashares
• Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Souvenirs are perishable; fortunately, memories are not. Susan Spano

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There are times when even happy memories can be painful … 

• …and torture myself with happy thoughts… Terri Guillemets
• You can be sad recalling sad times, but if you really want to be sad, recall happy times. Robert Brault
• There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy. Dante Alighieri
• There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. Aeschylus

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… especially after a break up … 

• Isn’t it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle–it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It’s not an act of bitterness. It’s an act if self- preservation. It’s not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it? Ally Condie, First Day
• Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain? Bernhard Schlink
• Break up,  Heartbreak

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… and in times of grief 

• When we lose one we love, our bittersweet tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. Marilyn Monroe
• Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us. Brian Jacques
• Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that’s what you’re left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich. Mike Mills
• Grief

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Don’t block out your painful memories 

• I’ve never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don’t understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now.  Sophia Loren

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Don’t allow your memories to imprison you 

• The memories you have are just recordings of things past, not chains to bind you. Mike Dolan
• I use memories, but I will not allow memories to use me. Deepak Chopra

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Face your painful memories in order to heal them … 

• All that is left to bring you pain, are the memories. If you face those, you’ll be free. You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding from yourself; always afraid that your memories will incapacitate you, and they will if you continue to bury them. J.D. Stroube
• And, always, remember, even when the memories pinch your heart. Because the pain of all your experience is what makes you the person you are now. And without your experience—you are an empty page, a blank notebook, a missing lyric. Alysha Speer
• We each need to make peace with our own memories. We have all done things that make us flinch. Surya Das
• Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. Stephen Levine
• Remembering our pain can also teach us something important about ourselves. When we remember and then work through our hurts, we allow them to heal. Covering old hurts is just another way of denying who we are and what we want to become.  Just as someone earns her wrinkles because she has lived, we earn who we are by all that we’ve experienced–our joys, our pains, our sorrows.  It is only when we come to terms with painful memories that we can begin the process of extracting them from our pasts.  Leslie Levine
• Sometimes you can’t let go of the past without facing it again. Gail Tsukiyama
• Healing

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… and then let them go 

• When we have painful memories from hurting experiences, we may feel justified in holding on to the resentment. But resentment is corrosive. It doesn’t affect the person we feel anger toward, it destroys the host. Susan L. Taylor
• There would be far less suffering in the world if human beings – God knows why they are made like this-did not use their imaginations so busily in recalling the memories of past misfortunes, instead of trying to bear an indifferent present. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone. William Shakespeare
• When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin. Sara Zarr
• Letting go

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Share your painful memories with others 

• The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. Lois Lowry
• Sharing,  Vulnerability

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Reflect on your memories … 

• Everything that is past is either a learning experience to grow on, a beautiful memory to reflect on, or a motivating factor to act upon. Denis Waitley
• In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us. Virginia Woolf
• Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours–long hallways and unforeseen stairwells–eventually puts you in the place you are now. Ann Patchett
• Reflection

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… and create sense out of them by writing about them if it helps 

• It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled thoughts that clutter my mind and bookshelves, then maybe I can explain what happened. Maybe the worlds I have inhabited for the past seven years will assume order and logic and wholeness on paper. Maybe I can tell my story in a way that is useful to someone else. Nancy Horan
• Writing

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Changing the meaning you attach to a painful memory can help you to change your perception of the past 

• We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us. David Seamands
• What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
• Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future. Lewis B. Smedes
• No matter what has happened in your life, you have the power to change what that event means to you and thus, change your experience, both emotionally and physically. Therein lies your power to heal. Christiane Northrup
• Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes. Steve Maraboli
• We cannot change past events, no matter how painful, but we can always intend how we ‘feel’ about them and heal ourselves. Robert Anthony
• The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events—both yours and those of others—is to change the way you behold them. Neale Donald Walsch
• Perception

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Stop judging yourself with the memories of past mistakes 

• We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that was enough; we don’t need to do it again. But every time we remember, we judge ourselves again, we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again, and again. Don Miguel Ruiz
• Mistakes,  Self-forgiveness

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Without unhappy memories, the joyful moments would lose their meaning 

• There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have a feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever I can. Nicholas Sparks
• Joy,  Meaning

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We should never confuse our memories with facts, truth or reality … 

• Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
• I’m always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact. Diane Sawyer
• Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. Marcel Proust
• Facts can’t be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I’ve already drummed that thoroughly into your head. What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what’s behind them. Augusto Roa Bastos
• This does not make the authors of those narratives liars; it makes them servants of fallible human memory and perception. Tom Bissell
• You don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. John Green
• Memory itself is an internal rumour. George Santayana, The Life of Reason
• There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers. Rebecca Wells
• There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. Harold Pinter
• What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed. Julian Barnes
• Memory is the great deceiver. Neil Gaiman
• Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. Neil Gaiman
• No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. Roger Zelazny
• Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture. Jodi Picoult
• Few things are more deceptive than memories. Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events. Albert Einstein
• When something horrible happens, your brain doesn’t process the memories right. It stores everything– sounds, pain, smells, feelings– all mixed up. It doesn’t matter if you believed it or it made sense; it gets stored. Cherise Sinclair
• Facts,  Truth,  Reality,  Illusion

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… for in recollecting the past, we constantly edit and embellish our memories…  

• The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened. L. Berger
• Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts. (Leonard Shelby, Memento) Christopher Nolan
• Life is a rough biography. Memories smooth out the edges. Terri Guillemets
• The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. Tennessee Williams
• Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water. Sherwood Smith
• Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed. Brené Brown
• Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own. Salman Rushdie
• Most of our oldest memories are the product of repeated rehearsal and reconstruction. Ulric Neisser
• How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves. Julian Barnes
• Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. Marilynne Robinson

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… to make our memories fit into our preferred version of events 

• Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. Joseph Conrad
• What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
• Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories. Alice Munro
• We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it. J. Watson
• Interpretation

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Our memories become the products of an active imagination 

• Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts. Philip Roth
• There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. Josh Billings
• It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates.  There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment – but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?  Lord Byron
• Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take. Burnt Norton
• The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember. Harold Pinter
• Imagination

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In the retelling, our memories get converted into words and then, with time, we forget what’s behind them … 

• Facts can’t be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I’ve already drummed that thoroughly into your head. What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what’s behind them. Augusto Roa Bastos
• Memories fade but words hang around forever. Daniel H. Wilson
• No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. Roger Zelazny

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… until memories become only a phantom of our original experiences 

• All our lives we are engaged in preserving our experiences and keeping them fresh by artificially sprinkling the water of memory over them. They have ceased to retain their original smell and fragrance. Do you call it life— this effort at the preservation of a phantom freshness in something that is withered and gone? Vimala Thakar

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In fact, almost all our memories are illusions … 

• Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics. Steven Pinker
• The one wholly true thought you can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. A Course in Miracles
• I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions… Bob Dylan
• I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. Alan Watts
• But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality. Charlotte J. Beck
• Illusion

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… especially the memories that feel most real 

• The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.  Salvador Dali

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Our memories are nothing but a painted over version of the past; no longer a faithful record 

• Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record. Andre Maurois
• Memory is the greatest of artists and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary. Maurice Baring
• Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day. Grandma Moses
• Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. Walter Benjamin

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Many of us get our sense of identity from our memories; from our “story” of our past 

• Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit – unconscious and conscious. Siri Hustvedt
• Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. Saul Bellow
• Transcending the ego

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However, given that our memories are simply illusory thoughts in the head, we should stop defining ourselves in this way 

• The sense of self that is derived from our thinking—which includes all one’s memories, one’s conditioning, and one’s sense of self—is a conceptual one that is derived from the past. Eckhart Tolle
• A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature. John Henry Newman
• The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions. Eckhart Tolle

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Know yourself more by your dreams for the future than your memories of the past 

• Never let your memories be greater than your dreams. Doug Ivester
• I am not my memories. I am my dreams. Terry Hostetler
• Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories. Jesse Jackson
• Dreams,  The future

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Know yourself as pure awareness in this present moment rather than a story made up of past memories 

• To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. Eckhart Tolle
• Awareness,  Awaken to who you really are

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Everything you think you know about another person is also just memories, mostly illusions 

• Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. Haruki Murakami

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Let go of your memories of another and meet them as if for the first time 

• We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger. S. Eliot
• Genuine listening means suspending memory, desire, and judgment—and for a few moments, at least, existing for the other person. Michael P. Nichols

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Don’t live in your memories for that creates an empty life 

• I have memories – but only a fool stores his past in the future. David Gerrold
• Living in memories is an empty gesture. Rajneesh
• You can only live in the past inside your mind. Augusten Burroughs
• Anyone who limits her vision to memories of yesterday is already dead. Lilly Langtry

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Focus instead on the present 

• The past is in memory, the future – in imagination. A thing focused in the now is with me, for I am ever present. Nisargadatta Maharaj 
• We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. Alan Watts
• Forget about the past. It does not exist, except in your memory. Drop it. And stop worrying about how you’re going to get through tomorrow. Life is going on Right Here, Right Now — pay attention to that and all will be well. Neale Donald Walsch
• When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable. Martin Amis
• Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. Tennessee Williams
• Live in the present

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Focus on being happy now to create happy memories for the future 

• Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it. Sydney Smith
• Happiness

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Given that the past exists only as illusory memories in your head, learn to let it go 

• Forget about the past. It does not exist, except in your memory. Drop it. And stop worrying about how you’re going to get through tomorrow. Life is going on Right Here, Right Now — pay attention to that and all will be well. Neale Donald Walsch
• You can only live in the past inside your mind. Augusten Burroughs
• Past and future only exist as thoughts in your head. Eckhart Tolle
• People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind. Eckhart Tolle
• The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess. Chris Cobbs
• Letting go

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Live out of your imagination, not your memory 

• We should use our imagination more than our memory. Shimon Peres
• To be successful we must live from our imaginations, not from our memories. Stephen Covey 
• There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. Josh Billings
• The secret is to consciously respond based on inspiration, imagination, intuition and divine intelligence, not to simply react based on memory, conditioning, and impulse. Geraldine Evans
• Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith. Amos Bronson Alcott
• It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. Lewis Carroll
• Imagine for a moment your own version of a perfect future. See yourself in that future with everything you could wish for at this very moment fulfilled. Now take the memory of that future and bring it here into the present. Let it influence how you will behave from this moment on. Deepak Chopra
• I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past. I can become my own creator. Stephen Covey
• Education: The development of the memory at the expense of the imagination.  Owen Johnson
• It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ says the White Queen to Alice. Lewis Carroll
• Imagination

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Don’t trust your memory for it is a net full of holes … 

• Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it. Georges Duhamel

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… and memories tend to fade over time 

• Time’s the thief of memory. Stephen King
• The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time. Marcus Aurelius
• I sit quietly and think about my mom. It’s funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out. Audrey Niffenegger
• There were some memories, though, that never faded. Cassandra Clare
• Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading. Kazuo Ishiguro
• Experience had taught me that even the most precious memories fade with the passage of time. Nicholas Sparks

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Compensate by writing things down 

• Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. Will Self
• Your mind, while blessed with permanent memory, is cursed with lousy recall. Written goals provide clarity. By documenting your dreams, you must think about the process of achieving them. Gary Ryan Blair 

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Compensate by telling the truth 

• No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. Abraham Lincoln
• If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. Mark Twain
• Tell the truth. That way you don’t have to remember a story. John Wooden
• It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying. Michel de Montaigne
• A liar should have a good memory. Quintilian
• Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie. Michel de Montaigne
• Liars need good memories. French Proverb
• Truth

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Compensate by taking lots of snapshots 

• A photograph is like the recipe – a memory the finished dish. Carrie Latet
• A photograph is memory in the raw. Carrie Latet
• She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. Frank Deford
• Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories. Theodore Levitt
• It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down…. Kate Morton
• What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. Karl Lagerfeld
• You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident. Isaac Marion
• A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. Eudora Welty
• Take lots of snapshots. Jackson Brown Jr.
• Photography

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Improve memory through walking 

• Just walk for around forty minutes a day to enjoy the best happiness boost possible. You’ll not only benefit from serotonin, melatonin and adrenaline increases, you’ll also boost oxygen levels in your brain, thereby increasing focus and short-term memory. Karl Moore
• Walking

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Improve memory through selective and focused attention 

• Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory. Richard Whately
• The true art of memory is the art of attention. Samuel Johnson
• It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. Barbara Kingsolver
• Attention

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Improve memory through exercise 

• Exercise changes the brain. It increases the activity level of important brain chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin…. Exercise also increases the brain’s production of a key growth hormone called BDNF. Because levels of this hormone plummet in depression, some parts of the brain start to shrink over time, and learning and memory are impaired. But exercise reverses this trend, protecting the brain in a way nothing else can. Stephen Ilardi
• Exercise

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Improve memory through meditation 

• Meditation enhances cognition, memory, and the ability to concentrate on specific tasks without creating any health risks to your brain. Andrew Newberg
• When you arrive in your own silence, you will know true freedom and real power. Stop, take a minute, and listen to the silence within you today. Then be aware of what disturbs your inner silence. It could be negative thought, memories or sensations. And when you are aware, you will know what is draining your creative power, and you will know what needs to change…. on the inside. Karen Beacon
• Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self- esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation. Jonathan Haidt
• Meditation

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Improve memory through applying and practicing knowledge 

• The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything. Henry Hazlitt
• Knowledge

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Improve memory by understanding 

• I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner. Aleister Crowley
• Understanding

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Improve memory through music 

• Music is stored in our long-term memory. When we learn something through music, we tend to remember it longer and believe it more deeply. Dr. Joyce Brothers
• Music

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Nothing evokes memory like smell … 

• The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back pictures as sharp as photographs of scenes that had left the conscious mind. Thalassa Cruso
• The faintest waft is sometimes enough to induce feelings of hunger or anticipation, or to transport you back through time and space to a long-forgotten moment in your childhood. It can overwhelm you in an instant or simply tease you, creeping into your consciousness slowly and evaporating almost the moment it is detected.  Stephen Lacey
• Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town.  Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.  A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.  Diane Ackerman
• The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood. Richard Paul Evans
• There is nothing like an odor to stir memories. William McFee
• Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. Vladimir Nabokov
• Scents bring memories, and many memories bring nostalgic pleasure. We would be wise to plan for this when we plant a garden. Thalassa Cruso
• The senses

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… except maybe music 

• Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory. Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Music is the way our memories sing to us across time. Lance Morrow
• Every life has a soundtrack. There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. There’s another that reminds me of tagging along with my father on Sunday morning to pick up the New York Times. There’s the song that reminds me of using fake ID to get into a nightclub; and the one that brings back my cousin Isobel’s sweet sixteen, where I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with a boy whose breath smelled like tomato soup. If you ask me, music is the language of memory. Jodi Picoult
• Music

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Having a bad memory can have its advantages … 

• The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Forgetfulness is a form of freedom. Kahlil Gibran
• Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good. Friedrich Nietzsche

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… including a clear conscience … 

• A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory. Mark Twain
• A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. Doug Larson
• Conscience

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… and a greater sense of happiness 

• One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory. Rita Mae Brown
• Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. Franklin Pierce Adams
• Happiness? That’s nothing more than good health and a poor memory. Albert Schweitzer
• Happiness is good health and a bad memory. Ingrid Bergman
• Happiness

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Give your children happy memories to look back on … 

• Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children. Charles R. Swindoll
• The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul. Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Childhood

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… for memories of childhood can both haunt and empower 

• A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.  Carol Shields
• Adulthood is when the ghosts of childhood appear. Terri Guillemets
• And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses – would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Rainer Maria Rilke
• What we remember from childhood we remember forever – permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen. Cynthia Ozick

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Memories of bad times recalled in tranquility can have a sweetness to them 

• Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember. Seneca
• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. James Thurber
• ..when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. Jane Austen
• How sad and bad and mad it was – but then, how it was sweet. Robert Browning
• Tranquility

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Thoughts on memory and words 

• Sometimes a perfect memory can be ruined if put to words. Nova Ren Suma
• Language is memory and metaphor. Storm Jameson
• Kind words are jewels that live in the heart and soul and remain as blessed memories years after they have been spoken. Marvea Johnson
• Facts can’t be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I’ve already drummed that thoroughly into your head. What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what’s behind them. Augusto Roa Bastos
• Memories fade but words hang around forever. Daniel H. Wilson
• No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. Roger Zelazny
• Words

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Thoughts on memory and forgetting 

• The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don’t come to mind when we want them. Friedrich Nietzsche
• People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things – where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance – but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget… There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living. Stephen Carpenter
• Remembering is easy. It’s forgetting that’s hard. Brodi Ashton
• When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin. Sara Zarr
• I’ve a grand memory for forgetting. Robert Louis Stevenson

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Focus on creating memories that will last forever rather than buying physical possessions 

• It’s better to spend money on life experiences than on expensive things, for memories can be savoured for a life time, whereas the “joy” of possessing a new thing is only short lived. Graeme Myburgh

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Thoughts on memory and emotion 

• I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. Virginia Woolf
• To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory’s vault and mix in a sad memory from one’s own life. Albert Finney
• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. James Thurber
• I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect. Alex Grey
• I want to experience as many different tastes, sights, emotions, conflicts, and cultures as possible, so that I can expand the canvas of my memory and enrich my comedy. Patton Oswalt
• Identify your feelings and moods. Depression is a self-destructive effort to avoid feeling. Accept that emotions are natural and helpful. Learn that mood changes don’t come “out of the blue” — they are always started by an event, a memory, a dream. Identify what starts your mood changes. Richard O’Connor
• Let the wave of memory, the storm of desire, the fire of emotion pass through without affecting your equanimity. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
• Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water. Sherwood Smith
• No matter what has happened in your life, you have the power to change what that event means to you and thus, change your experience, both emotionally and physically. Therein lies your power to heal. Christiane Northrup
• Recalling happy memories allows you to shift negative emotions.
• Replay happy days. The practice of repetitively replaying your happiest life events serves to prolong and reinforce positive emotions and make you happier.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Emotion

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• A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory. Mark Twain
• A good storyteller is a person with a good memory and hopes other people haven’t. Irvin Cobb
• A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. Doug Larson
• A photograph is memory in the raw. Carrie Latet
• An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory. Franklin Jones
• Apart from health, family, friends, possessions, memories, rights and reputation, what do you have to lose. Ashleigh Brilliant
• As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two. Norman Wisdom
• Clear Conscience: Poor memory.
• Creditors have better memories than debtors. Benjamin Franklin
• Earliest memory. Going to a party with dad, coming home with mum.
• Education: the development of the memory at the expense of the imagination. Owen Johnson
• Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment. Francois de La Rochefoucauld
• Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film.
• Happiness? That’s nothing more than good health and a poor memory. Albert Schweitzer
• He has a photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on.
• I don’t remember anybody’s name. How do you think the “dahling” thing got started? Zsa Zsa Gabor
• I have a great memory. I remember going to a party with my dad and coming home with my mum.
• I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me. Noel Coward
• I have a photographic memory. Its just that I sometimes forget to take off the lens cap.
• I remember things that happened sixty years ago, but if you ask me where I left my car keys five minutes ago, that’s sometimes a problem. Lou Thesz
• I’m going to memorize your name and throw my head away. Oscar Levant
• I’ve a grand memory for forgetting. Robert Louis Stevenson
• I’ve got a superb memory. I can recite 10 pages of the London telephone directory by heart. Ready? Smith, Smith, Smith …
• If you can look back on your life with contentment, you have one of man’s most precious gifts — a selective memory. Jim Fiebig
• Impregnable: A woman whose memory of labor is still vivid.
• Improve your memory by doing unforgettable things.
• In memory everything seems to happen to music. Tennessee Williams
• In no time it will be a forgotten memory. Samuel Goldwyn
• It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. Oscar Wilde
• It’s disposable fun. Check your brain at the door on the way in. Drop all memory of the movie on your way out. Rubin Safaya
• It’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. Jack Handey
• Just trying to give my kids a few childhood memories they don’t have to repress…
• Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
• Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. Austin O’Malley
• Memory is the thing you forget with. Alexander Chase
• Memory is what a man forgets with. Odell Shepherd
• Memory is what tells a man his wedding anniversary was yesterday. Franklin P. Jones
• Memory is what tells a man that his wife’s birthday was yesterday. Mario Rocco
• My fairy Godmother once asked me if I’d rather have a long penis or a long memory. I forget what my answer was.   Stewart Francis
• My memory is reasonably good—unlike yours, dear sir!” “Mine is erratic,” he said imperturbably. “I remember only what interests me.”  Georgette Heyer
• My wife has a terrible memory. She doesn’t forget anything.
• No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch. Leo F. Buscaglia
• Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it. Michel de Montaigne
• Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. Robert Benchley
• Old age is when your memory is shorter and your stories are longer.
• One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory. Rita Mae Brown
• Only those with no memory insist on their originality. Coco Chanel
• Peter Marshall: True or false: having a good memory is a sign of a well-adjusted personality. Karen Valentine: What was the question?   Karen Valentine
• Put it out of your mind; in no time it will be a forgotten memory. Samuel Goldwyn
• Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before. Steven Wright
• There are memories I choose not to live with, but we hang out at the same bar. Robert Brault
• There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third. Timothy Leary
• When I told the doctor about my loss of memory, he made me pay in advance.
• Whenever I think about the past it just brings back so many memories. Steven Wright
• Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person? Francois de La Rochefoucauld
• Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be. Bob Dylan
• You know what a storyteller is, don’t you? It’s a person that has a good memory who hopes other people don’t. Sandra Dallas
• You never realize what a good memory you have until you try to forget something. Franklin Jones

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