Pete Docter Quotes

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.

Man is the only creature whose emotions are entangled with his memory.

In the years that I have been an actress, I have told the story of my life many times, and I get tired of it, so sometimes I change it a little. That is, I change the mood. If I am feeling sad, then I remember to tell only the sad things. If I am feeling happy, then I can remember only to tell all the good things.

Feelings are memories. Memories are also feelings.

On the stem of memory imaginations blossom.

When the brain is working to remember something, similar patterns of neurons fire as they did during the perception of the original event. These networks are linked, and each time we revisit them, they become stronger and more associated. But they need the proper retrieval cues--words, smells, images-- for them to be brought back as memories

If I just concentrate I can walk into memory's store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it.

Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths.

Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.

An actor definitely has to be in the past a well as the present; an actor must react to past experiences every minute, every second.

Memory feeds imagination.

I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.

Memory is the basis of every journey.

Some memories are best absorbed through your eyes in real time, even if you have no record of it later. Because then you can access that memory and how you felt in that moment. If you're looking at your cellphone screen, taking a video of something that is otherwise unforgettable, watching it later will not recover the emotion you would have had, had you witnessed it directly.

True joy is a profound remembering; and true grief the same.

You have a different audience. Your personal energy is different because some days you're energized, some nights you might be tired so that affects your memory and your emotion.

A person's memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It's you.

I remember in one of my early films I had a drunk scene. It was Kiss Me Goodbye, with Sally Field, and I was playing this kind of nerdy guy who gets drunk and dances. And so I thought, "Oh well, I'll just get drunk and do the dance." And it was wonderful, but then I had the rest of the day, and the next day. So I learned that you don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.

A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.

The most important, the longest lasting, the strongest emotional, and the most practiced memories are the ones that are embedded the deepest in the brain, and because we have retrieved them so many times previously, they are the most able to be retrieved. We all hear about people who can remember their youth, their phone number, or street address from 70 years ago, but they cannot recall what they had for breakfast. The memory of this morning's breakfast wasn't rehearsed, and wasn't very important, so it fades away quickly.

Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place

I found a Bill Evans record in the bookcase and was listening to it while drying my hair when I realized that it was the record I had played in Naoko's room on the night of her birthday, the night she cried and I took her in my arms. That had happened only six months earlier, but it felt like something from a much remoter past. Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often-too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.

Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.

An event in the present evokes past sensations. But science couldn't explain how a foolish heart had the power to overrule common sense.

for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.