Christian Bale Quotes

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.

That reminds me of something that happened to me when I was a kid.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

Everybody knows how fallible memory can sometimes be. You remember certain fragments precisely, but as soon as you try to join the fragments together, for a story, there is a certain - not falsification, but a shifting.

You can't recover memories of a missing event. That's a fallacy.

I always try to write from memory, and I always try to use memory as an editor. So when I'm thinking of something like a relationship or whatever, then I'm letting my memory tell me what the important things were.

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

Memory narrativises itself.

I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.

The other day I... uh, no, that wasn't me.

How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. We're not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we're just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

Remind a man of what he remembers, and you will make him forget it.

Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.

While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.' No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.

This can't be true but I remember it.

It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction.

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

What I've realized in the last year, 80% of my act has already happened to me, and it's not until you retell the story at a party or to a friend or it comes up on the podcast that you, I don't know why I'm not doing that onstage!

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

Memory weaves and traps us at the same time according to a scheme in which we do not participate: we should never speak of our memory, for it is anything but ours; it works on its own terms, it assists us while deceiving us or perhaps deceives up to assist us.

If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?

„Ma'am?“ She glanced up at me, pushing her glasses up her nose as she did. “Hmm? Oh, I remember you. Miss Melbourne.“ “Melrose,“ I corrected. “Are you sure? I could've sworn you were named after someplace in Australia.“ „Well, my first name is Sydney,“ I said, not sure if I should be encouraging her.

What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

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

The past is just a story we tell ourselves.