W. S. Merwin Quotes

If it's hard to remember, it'll be difficult to forget.

Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

He hasn't said whether he remembers the episode itself - or, if he doesn't, whether that is because it never happened or because it happened too often to keep track. More important, he hasn't said what he thinks about it all from the perspective of 2003.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

Now all my teachers are dead except silence.

We have all forgot more than we remember.

The bells cease, and the power goes from me, and I descend again to the world of the living; and if in some foolish confiding moment I try to explain why I want to re-live those old days, to tear the Truth out of the past so that all men shall see plainly, perhaps someone will say to me, 'Oh, the War! A tragedy - best forgotten.'

Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.

When someone important to you, someone that's played a big role in your life, when they're gone... When you write about them or pay tribute to them, you want to do it in a way that's thoughtful.

I will never forget the day David Bowie passed away. I will actually never forget that day because I woke up in the middle of the night and it was the first thing on my phone. I had to lay there. It was almost like everything stopped.

To see the faces and hear the voices of victims of the Holocaust - one of the darkest chapters in history - was an experience I will never forget.

I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.

The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

We had to survive to remember. Otherwise everything we were would disappear. Those people we loved would fade as though we'd never loved them, as if they'd never walked and talked and burned, forgetting them was the real evil. That was the hole of darkness.

One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.

The need has gone; the memorial thereof remains.

He who forgets will be destined to remember.

A red map isn't easy to follow. Any document made of blood and bones is tricky. Wrong turns are easily made, and there are often piles of stones in the road. A person has to disregard time and sorrow and all the damage done. If you follow, if you dare, the thread always leads to whomever or whatever you've forgotten.

you never forget your first fall.

All her knowledge is gone now. Everything she ever learned, or heard, or saw. Her particular way of looking at Hamlet or daisies or thinking about love, all her private intricate thoughts, her inconsequential secret musings – they’re gone too. I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I’m watching it burn right to the ground.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.

I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What.

The part I remember best is the beginning.