Vasily Grossman Quotes

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

On the stem of memory imaginations blossom.

If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.

The incidence of memory is like light from dead stars whose influence lingers long after the events themselves.

Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths.

People are machines of forgetfulness

Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.

People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

The very effort to forget teaches us to remember.

Remembering. Forgetting. I'm not sure which is worse.

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.

I've learned that memories can have a physical, almost living presence.

Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing.

Memory is the basis of every journey.

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

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

I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them.

I think of memory as a game, that is as something one engages in with a very profound kind of "playfulness."

Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches.

Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction.

Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon on puberty, all that sentimental candyfloss. The next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go.. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten.

I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.

Memory - the very skin of life.

For as long as I can remember, I've had memories.