Samuel Beckett Quotes

Recalling, for me, is a great way of living, so not to forget.

There is no fence nor hedge round time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it if you can remember.

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

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

What does it remember like?

It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing.

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.

The French say that to part is to die a little. To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.

And so there would always be more to remember that could no longer be seen...our history is always returning to a little patch of weeds and saplings with an old chimney sticking up by itself...and here I look ahead to the resting of my case: I love the house that belonged to the chimney, holding it bright in memory, and love the saplings and the weeds.

Nothing awakens reminiscence like an aroma.

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

In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.

Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered.

And what did I think when I was small and why did I forget? And what else will I forget when I grow older? And if you forget is it as if it never happened? Will none of the things you saw or thought or dreamed matter?

I couldn't remember ordinary moments, only the ones that had made an impression. Ordinary moments were the ones that fell away first.

I remember old Elvis when he forgot to remember to forget.

Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.

A lot of artists use memories. A lot of prose writers, a lot of poets, a lot of songwriters, refer back to something. Generally it's all you've got, unless you're brilliant and can write totally in the now.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.

When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget.

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.

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