Quotation
"'Love can turn to hate very easily. It is easier to hate where you have loved than it is to be indifferent where you have loved.'" -Agatha Christie, Elephants Can Remember

Quotations
"'I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me…'" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"'As I read it I feel humbled and insignificant — which is good for me. I say to myself, "You poor, pitiful, little creature, did you ever imagine you could write? If so, your delusion is now stripped away from you for ever and you behold yourself in your naked paltriness." But I shall recover from this state of mind — and believe again that I can write a little — and go on cheerfully producing sketches and poems until I can do better.'" - L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

"'…I know it's good for me. Horrible things always are good for you, I suppose. After you've been killed a few times you don't mind it. But the first time one does — squirm.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'Cousin Jimmy thinks I did perfectly right. Cousin Jimmy would think I had done perfectly right if I had murdered Andrew and buried him in the Land of Uprightness. It's very nice to have one friend like that, though too many wouldn't be good for you.'"
-L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

"I used to read everything, Professor, I read all the time.  Now all I read is poetry.  Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.  I don't know if you follow me, Professor.  Only poetry — and let me be clear, only some of it — is good for you, only poetry isn't shit." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"She said gently: 'My dear, I'm trying to be good for you!'" -Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

Quotations
"Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort." -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

"'I — I meant well. You must believe that, I meant well.'
Such sad words, Poirot thought, some of the saddest words in the world." -Agatha Christie, Hallowe'en Party

"…exclaimed Murray rapturously, not meaning a syllable of it, but devoutly believing he did." -L.M. Montgomery, "At Five O'Clock in the Morning"

"It appeared that nobody ever said a thing they meant, or ever talked of a feeling they felt, but that was what music was for." -Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Quotation
"'Yes, yes, yes! I was happy there. I can't stand, just now, being reminded of happiness…. Don't you understand? A time when one didn't know what was coming. When one said confidently, everything is going to be lovely! Some people are wise — they never expect to be happy. I did.'" -Agatha Christie, The Hollow

Quotations
"'My dear,' he said, 'so many people are disgusting about so many things.'" -Agatha Christie, Murder In Three Acts

"But I was quite breathless at the thought of what I had done. I had shown somebody both sides of my life. Told him everything as sincerely and truthfully as I could. Taken immense pains to explain things about my submerged life that really were disgusting and never could possibly see the light of literary day. On the whole I had made myself out far worse than I was — more boastful, more cynical, more calculating. And there sat the man I had confided in, singing to himself and smiling…. It moved me so that real tears came into my eyes. I saw them glittering on my long silky lashes — so charming." -Katherine Mansfield, "Je ne parle pas français"

"God, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?" -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"'Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays us, one moment free; the next, this. Here we are among the breadcrumbs and the stained napkins again. That knife is already congealing with grease. Disorder, sordidity and corruption surrounds us. We have been taking into our mouths the bodies of dead birds. It is with these greasy crumbs, slobbering over napkins, and little corpses that we have to build. Always it begins again; always there is the enemy; eyes meeting ours; fingers twitching ours; the effort waiting. Call the waiter. Pay the bill. We must pull ourselves up out of the chairs. We must find our coats. We must go. Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, "Now I am rid of all that", find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Quotations
"…no person, no matter how vivid an imagination he may have, can invent anything half so droll as the freaks and fancies that originate in the lively brains of little people." -Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

"'You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.'" -Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

"'Imagination is a very dangerous thing…'" -Agatha Christie, "The Tuesday Night Club"

"'The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"'It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

"But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination of it?" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"'Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your imagination; that's where you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Quotations
"She was childish enough still to have little sense of proportion. A year, to Linda, seemed like an eternity." -Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

"'It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody.'" -Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

"'Thou has hit it, Dick,' quoth old Hammond; 'it is the child-like part of us that produces works of imagination. When we are children time passes so slow with us that we seem to have time for everything.'" -William Morris, News from Nowhere

"I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children's books to read." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Quotations
"…and all the time feeling like the miserable spirit in a ghost story she had once read who had a live coal in its breast instead of a heart." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'I am surrounded by bitter fancies and unbidden ghosts — the little spectral joys of the past.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'I want rest — rest,' said Mrs. Kent, laughing wildly. 'Can you find that for me? Don’t you know I'm a ghost, Emily? I died years ago. I walk in the dark.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"She said: 'I've met a ghost. That's what it is.'
'A ghost, Mademoiselle?'
'Yes.'
'The ghost of what? Or of whom?'
'Oh, the ghost of myself.'
Poirot asked gently: 'Was it a painful ghost?'
'Unexpectedly painful. It took me back, you know.'"
-Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

"'I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'" -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

"Now I know why the ghosts howl and haunt the tidelands. It's not because they want to scare you or steal your soul. They just want to be Seen." -Jennifer L. Holm, The Trouble With May Amelia

Quotations
"…peaceful in a way that seemed to go beyond simple peacefulness, thought Fate, or maybe not, maybe her peacefulness was just peacefulness and a hint of weariness, peacefulness and banked embers, peacefulness and tranquility and sleepiness, which is ultimately (sleepiness, that is) the wellspring and also the last refuge of peacefulness. But then peacefulness isn't just peacefulness, thought Fate. Or what we think of as peacefulness is wrong and peacefulness or the realms of peacefulness are really no more than a gauge of movement, an accelerator or a brake, depending."
-Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"When shall I finally untangle my thoughts, when shall I find peace and rest within myself again?" -Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

"'Yet surely I am not born to be for ever wretched; the time will come when' — She began to think she might one time be happy, but recollecting the desperate situation of Theodore, 'No,' said she, 'I can never hope even for peace!'" -Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose. Try it sometime." -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"'That's peace — real peace. To come to the end — not to have to go on….  Yes, peace…'" -Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

Quotations
"They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words." -Joan Didion, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem"

"Little, silly, dreamy, happy, ignorant Fourteen! Always thinking that something great and wonderful and beautiful lay in the years ahead. Quite sure that the "mountain purple" could be reached. Quite sure that dreams always came true. Foolish Fourteen, who yet had known how to be happy." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"If there's one thing you can't see at the age of fifteen, it's ahead." -Richard Peck, The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts

"'It's awful to be sixteen — simply awful.'
One didn't somehow, know where one was." -Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

"Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail." -John Green, Looking for Alaska

Quotations
"To-night everything seemed to drift through her consciousness in a dreamy, jumbled procession of delight, big and little things, past and present, all tangled up together." -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

"'I believe the present matters — not the past! The past must go. If we keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. We see it in exaggerated terms — a false perspective.'" -Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas

"…dreaming of the past which is, Mrs. Vallance thought, somehow so much more real than the present. But why!" -Virginia Woolf, "Ancestors"

"The past is slipping away and the present is a constant affront."
-Nora Ephron, "I Remember Nothing" from I Remember Nothing

"But no, the quest of time past is more difficult than you think, and time present is eaten up by such plaintive searchings. The film of your days and nights is wound up tight in you, never to be re-run — and the occasional flashbacks are faint, blurred, unreal, as if seen through falling snow. Now, you begin to get scared. You don't believe in God, or a life-after-death, so you can't hope for sugar plums when your non-existent soul rises." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"…The past and present wilt — I have fill'd them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future…." -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"                                                                                            (Section 51)

Quotation
"'Is he then an unhappy man?'
Poirot said, 'So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.'" -Agatha Christie, "The Apples of the Hesperides"

Quotation
"'Hate oughtn't to be stronger than love — but her hate was. And my hate for her is — I hate her — I hate her — I hate her.'" -Agatha Christie, Murder In Retrospect

Quotation
"'The happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in all the world.'"
-Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Quotations
"…instead of the misery and disillusion of sixty odd years of mental vacuum, of physical squalor, I would spare them all by ending everything at the height of my so-called career while there were still illusions left among my profs, still poems to be published in Harper's, still a memory at least that would be worthwhile." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

"But the peculiarity of these two strong memories is that each was very simple.  I am hardly aware of myself, but only of the sensation.  I am only the container of the feeling of ecstasy, of the feeling of rapture.  Perhaps this is characteristic of all childhood memories; perhaps it accounts for their strength.  Later we add to feelings much that makes them more complex; and therefore less strong; or if not less strong, less isolated, less complete." -Virginia Woolf, A Sketch of the Past

"He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams." -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"Anyways, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions.  They turned the pain of others into memories of one's own.  They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"Nothing told her anything, except one thing — unless she had lost her memory, she had lost her way." -Elizabeth Bowen, "The Inherited Clock"

"'…I shall sit with my memories. I expect to spend some time getting to know them.'" -Elizabeth Bowen, "The Inherited Clock"

"'People's memories are very short — a lucky thing, I always think.'" -Agatha Christie, "The Thumbmark of St. Peter"

"Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory." -James Joyce, "The Dead"

"No memory of the past touched him, for his mind was full of a present joy." -James Joyce, "A Little Cloud"

"He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him." -James Joyce, "A Painful Case"

"I liked the man. He was lean with memories." -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"My memory is a goddamn liar." -Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment                                                                               of My Imagination

"It is only my memory that holds me here. Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together." -Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

"…It had been made for happy remembering
By people who were still too young
To have learned about memory…" -Ted Hughes, "A Short Film"

Random Musing
I don't think a post about "memory" would be complete without the following video:

Quotations
"'Well, evil to some is always good to others.'" -Jane Austen, Emma

"'There is such a thing as evil…'" -Agatha Christie, Murder With Mirrors

"'…he looked at me as if I had been the embodied evil of life.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"'…reflecting how much certain forms of evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by resistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigor to the body.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"'And yet — she's a good soul. So good — she bores me. No evil in her. Somehow — one needs — a spice — of evil — in every personality. It's the — pinch of — salt — that brings out — the flavour.'
Another silence. Then he added gravely,
'Trouble is — the Cook — makes the pinch — too large — in most cases. Inexperienced Cook — wiser after — a few eternities.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"…'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! –
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'

'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore —
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'…" -Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

"…It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil…" -Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

Quotation
"'It's a hard thing, Knighton,' he said, 'how little one can do for those one loves.'" -Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train