It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards - Alice
I think we all have this little theatre on top of our shoulders, where the past and the present and our aspirations and our memories are simply and inexorably mixed. What makes each one of us unique, is the potency of the individual mix - Dennis Potter
I am not my memories. I am my dreams - Terry Hostetler http://bit.ly/6UiNh1
I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters - Joan Didion
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain? - from Macbeth, William Shakespeare
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At least until the transhumanist dream becomes a reality, which according to one leading modern philosopher may be never, we will cling on to whatever we can that reminds us of our loved ones.
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards - Alice
What matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in intro to his autobiography)
We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us - Charles Bowden in Blood Orchid: "
Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire - John Dewey