“Our memories are card-indexes consulted and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.”

“There was nothing medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.”

“We must consult our means rather than our wishes.”

“It seems to me, that this, too, is how memory works. What we remember of what was done to us shapes our view, molds us, sets our stance. But what we remember is past, it no longer exists, and yet we hold on to it, live by it, surrender so much control to it. What do we become when we put down the scripts written by history and memory, when each person before us can be seen free of the cultural or personal narrative we've inherited or devised?When we, ourselves, can taste that freedom.”

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”

“Grandmamma had been the last connection to our past. I had understood her as some referent moral authority to whom we paid no heed, but by whose judgments we measured our waywardness.”