Sydney Pollack Quotes

Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.

Even as I think of myself as a 'rememberer,' I also know my memory is probably doing all this work to reconstruct a narrative where I come off better.

As soon as anything is processed by memory, it’s fiction.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

The more Ronald Reagan repeated a story, the more he believed it and the more he resisted information that undermined premises.

One's memories aren't what actually happened - they're very subjective. You can always make it much better, right?

Sometimes we have to change the truth in order to remember it.

memory is so selective; wishful thinking presses it into service all the time.

You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.

Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.

I'm so suspicious of our own understanding of the past. I just think that your mind plays absolute tricks on you and fools you every minute of every day. And so when you're talking about the past, you're talking about something that never happened. At least it didn't happen the way you think it happened.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

I think that's the greatest gift one can have: point of view. You know? I've come to believe that if you have a bad memory of something, change it.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.

Memory is a fiction we tell ourselves: just a piece of the truth.

I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.