“You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.”
“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.”
“Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.”
“Middle-aged memory [is] an instrument of torture: you reach for the fruit of memory and it vanishes, to appear when you no longer want it.”
“Financial crashes happen precisely because the people who remember the last one have either died or retired and thus are no longer around, with memories and character formed by that previous experience, to warn people not to be irresponsible.”
“When you are dead your memory may live on so you need to be sure of what you want people to remember and even if you are worth remembering”