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
"'I wonder why people so commonly suppose that if two individuals are both writers they must therefore be hugely congenial,' said Anne, rather scornfully. 'Nobody would expect two blacksmiths to be violently attracted towards each other merely because they were both blacksmiths.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

"But there is a destiny which shapes the ends of young misses who are born with the itch for writing tingling in their baby fingertips…" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

"Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer." -Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Natasha Wimmer), 2666

"These weren't comforting nights, much less pleasant ones, but Espinoza discovered two things that helped him mightily in the early days: he would never be a fiction writer, and, in his own way, he was brave." -Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Natasha Wimmer), 2666

"Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature.  That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, after fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives.  Fear of being no good.  Also fear of being overlooked.  But above all, fear of being no good.  Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing.  Fear of the step that leaves no trace.  Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints.  Fear of the dining alone and unnoticed.  Fear of going unrecognized.  Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself.  But above all, fear of being no good.  Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers." -Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Natasha Wimmer), 2666

"See you at the Nobel, writers say, as one might say: see you in hell." -Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Natasha Wimmer), 2666

"Play and delusion are the blindfold and spur of minor writers.  Also: the promise of their future happiness." -Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Natasha Wimmer), 2666

"…You wanted to be a writer.
Wanted to write? What was it within you
Had to tell its tale?…" -Ted Hughes, "The God"