Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

As soon as anything is processed by memory, it’s fiction.

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.

You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.

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

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

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)

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.

The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true memories.

You can't trust your memory. You change it to suit yourself.

I was starting to think I was making up memories, just to have answers. Our brain does that sometimes. Or at least mine does.

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

memory is so selective; wishful thinking presses it into service all the time.

The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.

Sometimes I think the only memories I have are those that I’ve created around photographs of me as a child. Maybe I’m creating my own life. I distrust any memories I do have. They may be fictions, too.

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.

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

Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier.

Sometimes when you get older — and I’m not talking about you, I’m talking generally, because everyone ages differently — things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they’re part of your history, and if someone challenges you on them and says they’re not true — why, then you get offended because you can’t remember the first part. All you know is that you’ve been called a liar.

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

I don't believe in false memories, like I don't believe in false songs.

That is the beauty of memory, isn’t it? Our reality is always clouded by our perceptions of truth. (Mnimi)

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.