Alexander Smith Quotes

We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

I wear the key of memory, and can open every door in the house of my life.

All those years and their moments— Crackling bacon, slamming car doors, Poems tried out on friends, Will be one more archive, One more shaky text.

I don't like to reminisce much, and my walls don't have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff... I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.

We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.

There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs.

I don't think anybody thinks about their past much, unless they're in a mental institution.

Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.

I'm not nostalgic. My memories are back here in my mind.

I came to the place of my birth and cried: "The friends of my youth, where are they?"--and an echo answered, "Where are they?

Some of the days in November carry the whole memory of summer as a fire opal carries the color of moonrise.

Nothing in my life ever seemed to fade away or take its rightful place among the pantheon of experiences that constituted my eighteen years. It was all still with me, the storage space in my brain crammed with vivid memories, packed and piled like photographs and old dresses in my grandmother’s bureau. I wasn’t just the madwoman in the attic — I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.

All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.

Every memory I have from when I was a kid involves basketball.

The past is what you take with you.

If i were to lose my memories, I would rely on music. There is so much of my story embedded in each.

Now all the mute objects of my life seem to tell my story, to stretch back in time, if I look closely enough.

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.

Yea from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.

These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.

The world you see outside of you will always be a reflection of what you have inside of you.

Every house we have lived in, every building to which our hands have lent their work, belongs to us by virtue of love or of regret.