“Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recall how often we have told it to the same person?”— Morey Amsterdam
“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”— Chinua Achebe
“The principal problem of human memory is not storage or retrieval but... organization.”— Marvin Minsky
“I don't have a past. It's been erased. All I have is the present, and that is terrifying.”— Anna Akhmatova
“Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.”— Sholem Asch
“The house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind.”— Gaston Bachelard
“The satisfactions of the grandmother's garden are not those of the exhibitor's table. They are the abiding memories of the feelings it awakens.”— Liberty Hyde Bailey
“The best evidence we have of the past is our memories. But memories are neurological states in the present.”— Julian Barbour
“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...”— Julian Barnes
“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”— Thomas Beecham