I don't want to be memorized for everyone. I want to stay real,endless and inchangeable for my parents, kids and their descendants.

There is one woman I’ve dated I just can’t seem to forget, no matter how much I drink or how many concussions I give myself.

Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure-an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment:is it not?

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

The event happened on my birthday. I don’t remember the date, I only know it was my birthday because there was no cake or presents.

You cannot build a complete memory with a single memory tool any more than you can build a complete building with a single carpentry tool.

...our memory has no guarantees at all, and yet we bow more often than is objectively justified to the compulsion to believe what it says.

He was already fading. I knew that it wouldn't be long until he was just a vague image, however much I tried to cling onto his memory.

If it’s invisible, I can’t remember if it’s there or not. And not only that, but I can’t even remember what it is.

Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.

So - people a thousand years from now...This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.

Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.

When we first hear [a] word, we start putting these associational hooks into it that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date.

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.