fuck yeah, literary quotes

Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.

One can forgive but one should never forget.

To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

Once, in my father’s bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

But don’t forget who you really are. And I’m not talking about your so-called real name. All names are made up by someone else, even the one your parents gave you. You know who you really are. When you’re alone at night, looking up at the stars, or maybe lying in your bed in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you…Your muscles will toughen. So will your heart and soul. That’s necessary for survival. But don’t lose touch with that person deep inside you, or else you won’t really have survived at all.

I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.

All I’d ever wanted was to forget. But even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.