Umberto Eco Quotes

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

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

Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

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

I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes doesn't, and what its potential might be.

I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.

My brain is like a hard drive. Once you start adding new information, you start cutting off old information.

I don't think forgetting is an important feature of human memory. I think it's important to be able to remember things accurately.

Short term memory is not good.

Why do we remember stuff from when we were 5 years old but not important facts that are more recent?

Memory is a big one: our ability to use the memory and move things in and out efficiently - that affected what we were able to do more than anything.

I can remember weird things from way back, but not what I had for breakfast.

I've got a short memory span.

I'm not good at remembering things, in general.

Memory, in my opinion, is a complete noodle. It hangs on the silliest things but forgets the stuff that really matters.

No, I said. I didn't remember that. There was so much to remember, sometimes the best thing was to forget.

Estragon: I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

You have not forgotten to remember; You have remembered to forget. But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember - and generally more practical.

How strange are the tricks of memory, which, often hazy as a dream about the most important events of a man's life, religiously preserve the merest trifles.

My memory's pretty much gone.

Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back.

You never realize what a good memory you have until you try to forget something.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

I'm always trying to figure out ways to keep hold of memories. My one-sentence journal, for instance.