Don DeLillo Quotes

Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.

Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.

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.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.

Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

There is nothing that makes a man more self-satisfied than a poor memory.

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

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition of our existence. If the lore of the transmigration of souls is a true one, then these, between their exchange of bodies, must pass through the sea of forgetfulness.

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.

Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.

Continents of memory had been lost.

For I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately places events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago.

Remind a man of what he remembers, and you will make him forget 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 good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten.

My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name.

Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.

I have a remarkable memory; I forget everything. It is wonderfully convenient. It is as though the world were constantly renewing itself for me.

To the best of my recollection, I must recall on my memory, I cannot remember

If I have something I like to forget, then I forget it.

Memories were short and history unkind. It was the way of the world.

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness.