“Why allow all the old memories to have supremacy? Make new ones, memories of such luster and beauty that, should the old ones come back, they would be pallid and impotent in comparison.”

“I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.”

“Replace the old memory with a potentially crappier new one? No thank you.”

“What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.”

“That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fills in the gaps for you.”

“One couldn’t be selective when remembering the past. Ignore the turmoil, chaos and pain – and the truly great memories would not shine with such luster.”