Charles Stross Quotes

Plus, according to my mother, memories change like people do, especially if there's enough alcohol involved-Aphrodite

If memories were indeed like what a camera records, they could be forgotten, or they could fade so that they are no longer clear and vivid. But it would be difficult to explain how people could have memories that are both clear and vivid while also being wrong. Yet that happens, and it is not infrequent.

One can never be sure whether a very early memory is a real memory or just the recollection of something which you were told happened.

It's become a cliche to say that a piece of drama is about 'the nature of truth.' But 'Rectify' so openly plays with the slippery nature of memory that the label directly applies.

I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.

Every time you recall a memory, you're basically making another copy of it and at that same point it is susceptible to new changes and adaptations. So, you know, if you remember from when you were, you know, in second grade and there was Christmas and you got a present from your grandfather and your mom was wearing a red dress, that may or may not all have happened.

I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

At the time I could no more believe my eyes than now I can trust my memory.

What matters is the imaginative truth.

There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.

It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt.

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts.

However, for story reasons, we needed to represent them in certain ways. One of the things that sort of blew me away that I didn't know when we started is that memories are completely susceptible to change. And this is, you know, one of the many reasons why certain people are trying to get it taken out - eyewitness testimony in court cases because it's very unreliable.

There are always three sides to every memory…yours, theirs, and the truth, which lies somewhere in between the two

Memory is a great betrayer.

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)

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.

- This isn't an interrogation or a trail. Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. -Truth is singular. It's 'versions' are mistruths.

I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as it was said to me.