Colleen McCullough Quotes

Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.

Boy, you know, it's amazing how your brain can turn into a sieve, and you can literally forget episodes that you have shot.

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.

The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.

This is how memories are; what seems so clear and unforgettable at one moment vanishes like steam the next.

When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.

Like a tree losing its leaves. I forget even the thing I was thinking.

My memories pale as I prevail upon them again and again. They become more and more ghostly. I fear nothing so much as losing them altogether and having only my blank endless mind to live in.

Oh time...time, pass so that I forget! Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget.

Where beams of imagination play, the memory's soft figures melt away.

The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.

Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estrangedmemory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

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?

It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?

Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use.... At the beginning of the road into the swamp they put up a sign that said "Macondo" and another larger one on the main street that said "God exists".

One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours´ sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.

Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.

You try and remember, but it never works.

I have a remarkable memory; I forget everything. It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me.

Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

To the best of my recollection, I must recall on my memory, I cannot remember