Andre Maurois Quotes

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances

The way we remember people, even their beauty is all so subjective and a matter of perspective.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

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.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.

If you ask two people to remember a specific event, the stories are going to vary wildly because we always make ourselves out to be the hero.

One's memories aren't what actually happened - they're very subjective. You can always make it much better, right?

Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since

I'm so suspicious of our own understanding of the past. I just think that your mind plays absolute tricks on you and fools you every minute of every day. And so when you're talking about the past, you're talking about something that never happened. At least it didn't happen the way you think it happened.

I wanted to write what I remembered to be true.

Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Memories are just stories we tell ourselves about our past; and that's often why they don't match when we've shared the same experiences with someone.

I remember my childhood as a horrible time. My mother says that nothing so horrible ever happened to me as the things that I remember.

Memory is a fiction we tell ourselves: just a piece of the truth.

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.

People talk from memory and memory often plays false.

Memory is often less about truth than about what we want it to be.

Oh, I don't keep a journal. How you remember an incident is dictated by your emotional state at the time. How you receive the information that is coming in is definitely based on your history and who you are.

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

You'll remember every damn loss. But the wins? You don't necessarily remember.

Memory is revisionist, you know. 'The Houston Kid' was based on true things that happened. But I know - from writing a memoir that I've been working on for awhile - that reconstructing memory is revisionism.

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.

A story is ultimately a memory. It's important when you're telling a story to think about why this memory is a memory. You don't remember everything in life; you just remember certain things - so, why this one?