Pat Conroy Quotes

With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together.

Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy.

I don’t remember the name of the last opponent I have had.

There was no way to grasp the reality of the present which slid away each second, invisible as air; reality only existed after the fact, in one's vision of the past.

The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.

Time is but the space between our memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time has disappeared.

Memory is therefore, neither Perception nor Conception, but a state or affection of one of these, conditioned by lapse of time. As already observed, there is no such thing as memory of the present while present, for the present is object only of perception, and the future, of expectation, but the object of memory is the past. All memory, therefore, implies a time elapsed; consequently only those animals which perceive time remember, and the organ whereby they perceive time is also that whereby they remember.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

I used to have a really sharp memory. And its loss has proven destabilizing from an identity perspective.

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

Remembrances last longer than present realities.

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.

We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp

To the best of my recollection, I must recall on my memory, I cannot remember

Our nemesis is time, against which we have a single ally, memory, and even it betrays us.

History repeats itself over and over again, but most of us have short memories.

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

What would the future of man be if it were devoid of memory?

Time did not mean anything to those who had too much of it, but it was even more precious once it was limited.

...forgetting is vastly underrated as a mental operation.

I used to take photographs just to remember people.

My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be reached, since it would be one more moment bounded by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn, further developments in order to be understood.

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?