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

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”

“But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity.”

“The past and future are what’s complicated. It’s the present that’s simple.”

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

“To envision the future; you must forget the past and make the present a memory”