The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to becomeerased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features. Judges know this very well: almost never do two eyewitnesses of the same event describe it in the same way and with the same words, even if the event is recent and if neither of them has a personal interest in distorting it.

A veces, para exorcizar los demonios de un recuerdo es necesario contarlo como un cuento

The more you love a memory; the stronger and stranger it becomes

Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.

También conseguimos engañar a nuestra memoria. A fuerza de repetirnos lo que hubiéramos debido hacer, termina por parecernos imposible no haberlo hecho.

A vida é cruel por ter inventado a memória. Como os velhos que recobram em matizes suas lembranças mais antigas, à beira da morte minha memória gravita em torno do sol, e como ele clareia tudo! Tudo é presente, nada está perdido. É como uma força oculta que nos impele para nos estimular de novo: diante da evidência de que não mais haverá futuro, o passado se amplifica, suas raízes engrossam, tudo em mim é rizosfera, as cores se cristalizam sobre cada estrato, a mais insignificante imagem toca o seu absoluto, o coração bate em crescendo.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events

The more we accustom ourselves to understanding the present in terms of memory, the unknown by the known, the living by the dead, the more desiccated and embalmed, the more joyless and frustrated life becomes. So protected from life, man becomes a sort of mollusc encrusted in a hard shell of “tradition,” so that when at last reality breaks through, as it must, the tide of pent-up fear runs wild.

Leo demasiado; todo eso fermenta.

What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough? It becomes your entire history.

— De donde nace que, cuando vemos alguna persona bien aderezada, y con ricos vestidos compuesta, y con pompa de criados, parece que por fuerza nos mueve y convida a que la tengamos respeto, puesto que la memoria en aquel instante nos represente alguna bajeza en que vimos a la tal persona; la cual inominia, ahora sea de pobreza o de linaje, como ya pasó, no es, y sólo es lo que vemos presente. Y si éste a quien la fortuna sacó del borrador de su bajeza (que por estas mesmas razones lo dijo el padre) a la alteza de su prosperidad, fuere bien criado, liberal y cortés con todos, y no se pusiere en cuentos con aquellos que por antigüedad son nobles, ten por cierto, Teresa, que no habrá quien se acuerde de lo que fue, sino que reverencien lo que es, si no fueren los invidiosos, de quien ninguna próspera fortuna está segura.

Vivir de recuerdos es morir.

The danger of memory is that it can turn anyone into a prophet.