Quotations
"'That's the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

"'You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"She was beginning to learn how full of silent little tragedies life is." -L.M. Montgomery, Pat of Silver Bush

"For there is no bond more lasting than that formed by the mutual confidences of that magic time when youth is slipping from the sheath of childhood and beginning to wonder what lies for it beyond those misty hills that bound the golden road." -L.M. Montgomery, The Golden Road

"Altogether I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one would have thought it to be. -Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life." -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"'I am growing up,' she thought, taking her taper at last. 'I am losing some illusions,' she said, shutting Queen Mary's book, 'perhaps to acquire others,' and she descended among the tombs where the bones of her ancestors lay." -Virginia Woolf, Orlando

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
"'Oh,' she though, 'how horrible it is that people have to grow up — and marry — and change!'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"'Changes come all the time. Just as soon as things get really nice they change,' she said with a sigh." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

"'…you'll change, whether you think you will or not.  Nothing ever stays the same.'" -Sylvia Plath, "Initiation"

"'Young people think they never can change, but they do in the most wonderful manner, and very few die of broken hearts.'" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"'How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!'" -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

"…she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; — and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquility to her heart." -Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

"Change leaves everything at the same level. Nothing stays bright but mornings." -Elizabeth Bowen, "Unwelcome Idea"

"'I remembered the old doctor – "It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot." I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.'" -Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

"Then he asked if I didn't like things changing.  And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine apart from becoming a girl or dying." -Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change." -Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

"'People change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal.'" -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"'The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.'" -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Random Musing
In case you were curious, I personally do not like change very much. I have very little use for it, and generally find it a huge (rather frightening) nuisance.

Quotations
1. "'I don't have much time, I have to haul corpses.  I don't have much time, I have to breathe, eat, drink, sleep.  I don't have much time, I have to keep the gears meshing.  I don't have much time, I'm busy living.  I don't have much time, I'm busy dying.  As you can imagine, there were no more questions.'" -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

2. "'Why isn't the wind happy, Mummy?' asked Walter one night.
'Because it is remembering all the sorrow of the world since time began,' answered Anne." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

3. "'…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

4. "'Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake — especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.'" -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

5. "…and come back, come back, come back to me." -Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

6. "One can get over anything in time." -Katherine Mansfield, "The Canary"

7. "'It makes me very sad at times to think about her. But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Random Musing
Sticking quotes #6 and #7 in there is kind of misleading. I don't feel that way. Not at all. That's just how I think I'll probably feel one day. Or how I hope I'll feel one day. That's "one day," not "right now." Right now I'm just hoping that I'll eventually get to a point where the world seems utterly interesting. Or even remotely interesting. Cause it doesn't right now. Instead it seems surreal and sad and inexplicable.

I guess what I'm saying is that what I find so awful about right now is that no matter what else is going on in life the one all-consuming feeling I have can essentially be summed up by:

                 "…wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad."

Quotations
"Marigold listened and sympathized with one side of her mind, and with the other carried on her own small though-processes. As is the way of womenkind of all ages, whether men know it or not." -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

"…and who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when combined with profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard ways, moments of astonishing daring, humour and sentimentality – who shall deny that in these respects every woman is nicer than any man?" -Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

"And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat." -Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness." -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Paris: No man is an island, but this woman is.
-Gilmore Girls (Episode 6.13: Friday Night's Alright For Fighting)