Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

I imitatea memory of beliefthat I do not own.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Take a person’s memories, and you change who they are.

That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.

Memory is a great betrayer.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

I have no issues with my identity.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri.

Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.

I'm always shocked when I see myself because I don't recognize myself.

So many people define themselves by what they've accomplished or not accomplished.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

I am myself a fabulous fake.

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

I didn't want to have to deal with having any moniker or separation between the self that I see and know myself as.

How you define yourself is a major issue for young people and adults alike.

Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.

I couldn't imagine living my life with another name.

There's no such thing as identity: it's something we have to believe in to make life more tolerable.

I don't think anyone is the perfect one to play me.

You can do fascinating things with the tricks memory can play and tell. People can come to believe things which didn't happen at all if they're told them enough times.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.