Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.

No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.

I think people are more in contact now with the consequences of war than they've been for a very long time. And that's what amazes me when sometimes politicians seem to forget their history. They don't look and re-learn about what has happened before. Maybe they haven't got the memory, maybe they're already too young, but you can see how we become puffed up, and how we as a nation rise so quickly if we're not careful.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

The collective memory of America is short.

I don't think a lot of the news outlets examine the effect of war on a family.

People say, "I'm tired of hearing about the war in Iraq. I'm tired of hearing about it." And it makes me realize how few people have deeper connections with it, as far as knowing people who have come back paralyzed or who have died, or families that have been affected . . . If they had a connection to it, then they wouldn't be tired of hearing about it.

A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.

Continents of memory had been lost.

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors.

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history.

Hitler at the end thought that he himself was one more casualty in the war.

The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.

The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come.

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

History repeats itself over and over again, but most of us have short memories.

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

What would the future of man be if it were devoid of memory?

Where would dictators be without our compliant amnesia? Make the collective lose its memory, you can conceal anything.

We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be.

The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace.

Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves - all plot and no characters, or made-up characters - Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.

War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?" - Quellcrist Falconer

Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?

Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory.