Galen Rowell Quotes

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." . . . And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event.

I have a very vivid memory.

Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary.

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

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?

She said I bet you dont remember me And I said only every other memory.

Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.

I'm surprised by how much I remember [on childhood on film]. I think it's just because I had these interesting moments. Of course, you never know when they're interesting moments, but there was a lot of stuff that I remember and have attached significance to later. I remember enough. I remember highlights.

I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.

I vaguely remember doing [all my] photo sessions, but definitely there were some surprises there for me.

And never forget, there is memory.

Memory is useful because it gives us a sense of continuity. But memory is also imprisoning because it conditions us in predictable ways.

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 each man's own last measure, and for some, the only achievement.

Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.

Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered.

Isn't it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are.

Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he's been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.

Memory really matters...only if it binds together the imprint of the past and the project of the future, if it enables us to act without forgetting what we wanted to do, to become without ceasing to be, and to be without ceasing to become.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It's a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe. I can smell the air, and I can touch the ground, and I can see the green of the trees. That's why I want to write a book.

Pictures can live in one's memory. That's why they are important.