“She filed those moments away like precious documents, wore them smooth with memory, collected them like bits of prayers.”

“History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.”

“Whenever she came across lines she liked, she'd mark them in pencil and commit them to memory as if they were Holy Writ.”

“I'm scared of using the few memories I have and turning them into memories of memories, like songs you've played too many times, and you feel just a bit less excited by each time.”

“She would do a mans work when she needed to, but she lived and died without ever putting on a pair of pants. She wore dresses. Being a widow, she wore them black. Being a woman of her time she wore them long. the girls of her day I think must have been like well wrapped gifts to be opened by their husbands on their wedding night, a complete surprise. 'Well! What's this!?”

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”