Walker Percy Quotes

Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed. But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.

Music is a soundtrack for your life. You hear some tune and you just get swept right back to that point in your life.

There is nothing like an odor to stir memories.

Proust writes, he remembers, physically. He depends on his body to give him the information that will bring him to the past. His book is called 'In Search of Lost Time,' and he does it through the senses. He does it through smell. He does it through feeling. He does it through texture. It is all physically driven, that language.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

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.

Let us say in the pocket of one of my old coats I find a movie ticket from many years ago. Once I see the ticket, not only do I remember that I saw this movie, but also scenes from this movie, which I think I have entirely forgotten, come back to me. Objects have this power, and I like it.

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I think listening to music from your youth is as powerful as a scent passed beneath your nose.

When I write about things, it's a lot to do with sense memory. How things smell and taste can bring incredible memories flooding back and transport you in an instant to another time and place.

You know what my drink is? Jack Daniel's. Yes, that is a wild man drink. That should come with bail money, you know what I'm saying? Because on Jack, you don't know where you're going to end up, but you know when you get there, you won't be wearing any pants.

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.

Because who can describe that look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?

Certain scents can evoke so much feeling, nostalgia, and trigger beautiful memories.

Nothing awakens reminiscence like an aroma.

Scent is the strongest tie to memory.

Places remember events.

The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.

My mom was there, in some form, in some sense, in some universe. My mom was still my mom, even if she only lived in books and door locks and the smell of fried tomatoes and old paper. She lived.

But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously.

Lord, keep my memory green.

I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you.

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?