I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

Mickey Rourke’s character in ‚The Wrestler‘ – that was my dad, that was my uncles, that was so many members of my family. It was the only thing they knew. And then they would end up wrestling for a hundred bucks, go to autograph signings for two hundred bucks.

In twenty years I’ve never had a day when I didn’t have to think about someone else’s needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.

We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick.

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

I only see clearly what I remember.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

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

I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

My recollection is – and I’d have to confirm this – but I don’t recall paying any money to go to law school.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

I think that I’ve had a very strange life.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

In my relationship with God, I’ve learned that if I follow a ‚formula‘ for how I spend my time with Him, then I’m just accomplishing a checklist of things I feel obligated to do to please Him. This makes my spiritual life more about doing what I need to do to fulfill an obligation than something meaningful.

Maybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

I mean, I wouldn’t pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I’m me.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I’ve always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn’t find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories – not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father’s generation. It’s a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.