Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

                                                                          —Alexander Solzhenitsyn

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.           —Mark Twain

Memory is the crux of our humanity. Without memory we have no identities.    —Erica Jong

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day. —Grandma Moses

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.     —Benjamin Franklin

The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.          —Elizabeth Bowen

How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; / One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. / What is the secret of the trick? / How did I get so old so quick?                                                         —Ogden Nash

It’s a pleasure to share one’s memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe — though we didn’t know it at the time. We know it now because it’s in the past, because we have survived.                —Susan Sontag

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.   —Willa Cather

Back on its golden hinges / The gate of Memory swings, / And my heart goes into the garden / And walks with the olden things.        

                                                                                —Ella Wheeler Wilcox