Alex Garland Quotes

I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down.

My impression is that the elimination of memories greatly reduces the value of the experience.

I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them.

A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness.

You never realize what a good memory you have until you try to forget something.

I can't remember anything I ever wrote.

I have a great memory.

People can remember their childhood, but events from four or five years ago are in a never-never land.

You don't just forget things overnight.

Our memory is and always will be as good as time travel gets, and in the meantime time will do the travelling for us.

The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.

For someone who can’t remember very much, there seems to be a lot I can’t forget.

I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

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

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?

I have the worst memory in the world. I can remember some of my dreams, but later that day, i'll forget them.

While drinking, while talking, while writing, while watering our garden, it's always possible to practice living in the here and the now.

Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.

I had forgotten that, and so many things. How could I put everything down on paper? It seemed impossible. No matter what, the majority of life would be left out of this story, this sliver of a version of the life I'd known. But I tried anyway.

I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them....But here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don't forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to remember.

I'm not here to be remembered, I'm here to be alive.