Memory Loss Quotes

“We are what we remember. If we lose our memory, we lose our identity and our identity is the accumulation of our experiences. When we walk down the memory lane, it can be unconsciously, willingly, selectively, impetuously or sometimes grudgingly. By following our stream of consciousness we look for lost time and things past. Some reminiscences become anchor points that can take another scope with the wisdom of hindsight. ("Walking down the memory lane" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We are often given pills or fluids to help remedy illness, yet little has been taught to us about the power of smell to do the exact same thing. It is known that the scent of fresh rosemary increases memory, but this cure for memory loss is not divulged by doctors to help the elderly. I also know that the most effective use of the blue lotus flower is not from its dilution with wine or tea – but from its scent. To really maximize the positive effects of the blue lily (or the pink lotus), it must be sniffed within minutes of plucking. This is why it is frequently shown being sniffed by my ancient ancestors on the walls of temples and on papyrus. Even countries across the Orient share the same imagery. The sacred lotus not only creates a relaxing sensation of euphoria, and increases vibrations of the heart, but also triggers genetic memory - and good memory with an awakened heart ushers wisdom.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Heaven left a hole in your heart.

But it’s up to you to choose if that hole will be filled with pain, anger, and the eternal darkness of loss . . .
Or if you will choose to fill it with light and love and have that hole shine out of you like a spotlight into your life, keeping their memory alive . . .

{It’s up to you.}”
― Tessa Shaffer, Heaven Has No Regrets

“Dissociative identity disorder is conceptualized as a childhood onset, posttraumatic developmental disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during trauma can result in alterations in memory encoding and storage. In turn, this leads to fragmentation and compartmentalization of memory and impairments in retrieving memory.2,4,19 Exposure to early, usually repeated trauma results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist and, over later development, become elaborated, ultimately developing into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder.”
― Bethany L. Brand

“Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?”
― Joyce Rachelle

“Memory likes to play hide-and-seek, to crawl away. It tends to hold forth, to dress up, often needlessly. Memory contradicts itself; pedant that it is, it will have its way.”
― Günter Grass, Peeling the Onion

“Saying that you do not remember something or someone is a less embarrassing or hurtful way of saying that you do not know it or them anymore.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Her ability to use language, that thing that most separates humans from animals, was leaving her, and she was feeling less and less human as it departed. She's said a tearful good-bye to okay some time ago.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“Memory loss is strange. It’s like showing up for a movie after it’s started. I’m sure I’ve missed something. I don’t know if it’s important or not. So I do the best I can to lose myself in the story and hope the gaps don’t matter. Later, I can look it up, or someone will remind me, or maybe it’s perfectly fine to not know.”
― Elizabeth Langston, Wishing for You

“With some stories, you really can't rush things. And it's often best just to sit back and enjoy the journey for what it is.”
― Melissa Hill, A Gift to Remember

“I don't remember her. But she feels special. There's this hole in my heart every time I draw her; you know, a sick sort of feeling. Like she's someone I lost.”
― C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows

“Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years—the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war.”
― Fredric Brown, Letter to a Phoenix

“Love is the only memory one never loses, Isaac.” His father had said. “Because even if one loses his mind the memory always remains in the heart.”
― Felix Alexander

“This woman had no idea who I was. She has no idea I was once a smoker, was thrown out of boarding school twice and a certified rebel with strong opinions. To her, I was new, fresh, immaculate to the bone. This was all strangely wonderful.”
― Suzka, Wonders in Dementialand: An Artist's Intimate and Whimsical Account of Dementia, Memory Loss, Caregiving and Dancing Gypsies

“I am daily learning
To be the reluctant guardian of your memories
There was light in those eyes; I miss that”
― Richard L. Ratliff

“Was the dementia of old age a blessing in disguise? No more thoughts. No more damage inflicted. No more memories of damage survived.”
― Janet Turpin Myers, the last year of confusion

“Those whose lives have been an exercise in the pitting of their wits, or the selling of their talents, time and strength, to those who pay the piper, can even in their old age, even with their wits partially gone, automatically practise defences, and appeal for aid. But not so those who have never asked, who have never bargained.”
― Norah Hoult, There Were No Windows

“A mind wanders, thoughts flee and memories fade. But tattoos, tattoos are forever. And if it is true to say that we carry ourselves with when we travel - then the body may very well be a beautiful canvas for the timeless lessons we learn and will learn when we travel.”
― lauren klarfeld

“The idea of disassociating from one’s surrounding, of taking a step back was rather clever on my mother’s part without her notice.”
― Suzka, Wonders in Dementialand: An Artist's Intimate and Whimsical Account of Dementia, Memory Loss, Caregiving and Dancing Gypsies

“Those whose lives have been an exercise in the pitting of their wits, or the selling of their talents, time and strength, to those who pay the piper, can even in their old age, even with their wits partially gone, automatically practise defences, and appeal for aid. But not so those who have never asked, who have never bargained.”
― Norah Houlton

“I’ve concluded that families of those with Alzheimer’s come in four distinct categories.
1. The first group is one we see the most. They laugh and visit the best they can, still enjoying the company of the person they love.
2. The second group comes a little less often. Instead of laughter, they may be brought to tears.
3. The third group sits mortified, frozen by their surroundings, near as helpless as the person they’ve come to visit.
To all of these people I say, “Thank you.”
4. The last group we don’t see because they are never here. There are instances where these families simply do not exist, but too often the hard truth is that they are busy elsewhere.”
― Charles Shoenfeld

“No existen recuerdos más activos y vigorosos que aquellos que se esconden detrás del velo misterioso de la amnesia.”
― Federico Andahazi, Los amantes bajo el Danubio

“In this chapter I restrict myself to exploring the nature of the amnesia which is reported between personality states in most people who are diagnosed with DID. Note that this is not an explicit diagnostic criterion, although such amnesia features strongly in the public view of DID, particularly in the form of the fugue-like conditions depicted in films of the condition, such as The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Typically, when one personality state, or ‘alter’, takes over from another, they have no idea what happened just before. They report having lost time, and often will have no idea where they are or how they got there. However, this is not a universal feature of DID. It happens that with certain individuals with DID, one personality state can retrieve what happened when another was in control. In other cases we have what is described as ‘co-consciousness’ where one personality state can apparently monitor what is happening when another personality state is in control and, in certain circumstances, can take over the conversation.”
― John Morton, Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves

“But how can one regret what, to the mind, has never existed? Even loss is an inaccurate description, for what loss is without the awareness of losing?”
― Nicole Krauss

“There is magic just outside our memory.”
― Suzka, Wonders in Dementialand: An Artist's Intimate and Whimsical Account of Dementia, Memory Loss, Caregiving and Dancing Gypsies

“Violet unwrapped everything old as if it were a ribboned gift given to her by the Gods.”
― Suzka, Wonders in Dementialand: An Artist's Intimate and Whimsical Account of Dementia, Memory Loss, Caregiving and Dancing Gypsies

“My mother had a way of accessing the energy of the people around her. There was no need to know their name, who they were or how she knew them. She didn’t recognize their surface. She went much deeper.”
― Suzka, Wonders in Dementialand: An Artist's Intimate and Whimsical Account of Dementia, Memory Loss, Caregiving and Dancing Gypsies

“There’s no protocol on how to console your girlfriend of four years who you just met this morning.”
― Colleen Hoover, Never Never

“The old me is sure making things difficult for the current me.”
― Colleen Hoover, Never Never: Part Two

“A person experiences time by traveling through the environment consisting of time and space, and encounters a variety of sense impressions. Time is the combined experience and cataloguing what is taking place now, a recollecting what took place before now, and the anticipation or expectation of a person registering future physical and mental sensations. Time is a happening that will arrive from the future and it will last for about as long as it takes to a person to inhale and exhale one deep bodily breath. In each recognizable segment of time, a person experiences in a thematic breathing cycle a tangible sense perception of either seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or some combination thereof. Then that distinct morsel of life detected by the physical senses passes from the slipstream of now and lodges into the silted fold of bygone memories.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls