Annie Dillard Quotes

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, let alone 10 years ago.

I am blessed that I quickly forget things.

People sometimes forget when you remember, but they always remember when you forget.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.

Time moves in one direction, memory in another.

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

When you begin to think about the past, you realize how much of it is lost to us.

I always find it extremely hard to remember the act of beginning. I almost deliberately forget it.

I like people who have the capacity to forget. I think that to forget is a good thing. Forgetting is good. But sometimes I cannot. For me, I cannot.

The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.

The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

You'd better watch where you go, and remember where you've been

We're not really afraid to die. We're only afraid of being forgotten. We know that we'll be forgotten, and the idea is unbearable, don't you agree? As time passes we become infrequent visitors in the minds of those left behind. The ones who clear out the house & divide up the belongings. Throw away the rubbish. And forget. If we knew that every evening someone lit a candle and sat down to think – thought about is if only for a few seconds – then we could depart this earth in peace. No-one will light a candle for me. Who would do that?

We live between two dense clouds; the forgetting of what was and the uncertainty of what will be.

All that I've lived I've forgotten, as if I'd vaguely heard it. All that I'll be reminds me of nothing, as if I'd lived and forgotten it.

In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.

The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams?

Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.

Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.

...and down they forgot as up they grew.

Remembering is the most overrated thing. Forgetting is far superior.

When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed.

I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them....But here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don't forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to remember.

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.