Alice Hoffman Quotes

People always remember the worst day of their lifes. It becomes a part of them forever.

There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.

The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

For someone who can’t remember very much, there seems to be a lot I can’t forget.

Forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.

There are certain things in life that you never forget. Things that dig deep, things that nest in the hadal zone.

If it's hard to remember, it'll be difficult to forget.

My guess is that fearful events are the hardest to root out. They're the ones we naturally remember the best, after all.

You were never what I wanted to forget.

My mother just wanted me to forget it. So, of course, every word was immediately, irrevocably branded into my brain.

At a certain point memory becomes a beach strewn with landmines, all life’s many losses buried in those sands.

I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.

Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget.

Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.

Your mind has a way of not letting you forget things you wish you could. Especially with people. Like, you'll always try your best to forget things that people say to you or about you, but you always remember. And you'll try to forget things you've seen that no one should see, but you just can't do it. And when you try to forget someone's face, you can't get it out of your head.

The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.

These bits of poetry that stick to her like burrs.

What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.

Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology ... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. And for me, what happened in the woods that day is one of these.

Funny how certain things stay with you.

People don't forget. Nothing gets forgiven.