“[Memory]... is a system of near-infinite complexity, a system that seems designed for revision as much as for replication, and revision unquestionably occurs. Details from separate experiences weave together, so that the rememberer thinks of them as having happened together. The actual year or season or time of day shifts to a different one. Many details are lost, usually in ways that serve the self in its present situation, not the self of ten or twenty or forty years ago when the remembered event took place. And even the fresh memory, the 'original,' is not reliable in a documentary sense....Memory, in short, is not a record of the past but an evolving myth of understanding the psyche spins from its engagement with the world.”

“. . .in your light, had I learned to love, here in your beauty, could I speakknowing of this space close withinas the breath held inside a garden rose, there— there is no time.”

“[Memory]... is a system of near-infinite complexity, a system that seems designed for revision as much as for replication, and revision unquestionably occurs. Details from separate experiences weave together, so that the rememberer thinks of them as having happened together. The actual year or season or time of day shifts to a different one. Many details are lost, usually in ways that serve the self in its present situation, not the self of ten or twenty or forty years ago when the remembered event took place. And even the fresh memory, the 'original,' is not reliable in a documentary sense....Memory, in short, is not a record of the past but an evolving myth of understanding the psyche spins from its engagement with the world.”

“beneath the stars that drift; she sighed and said "Every tale of a love can only be a tale of ghosts that linger in these spaces wecan never hold,"—as the wind gave echo”

“we lived depravityand called it truth, silencingour dreaming, andour love, discardingthings holy.”

“To forget would mean the things we never knew had never waited to be known, never waitedto be forgotten, had never been; waitingbeneath the long dead starsin time. . .”

“. . . Thisis not the same river at my fingertips. There are no paths, no sunken roadsfamiliar in the forest, by which we canretrace our steps, by which we can escapeby which we can reclaim and return, or hear the child’s song running in the timothy . . .”

“. . .the sorrows of the heart yearn to be erased, for one final atonementfinite and forgetting and whole—but time in its preservingwill not permit forgetting; destroyingonly when we can no longer begor argue with time to preserve the brief benisonsa few moments longer than our sins”

“. . .though the names of lovers are forgotten in time, their nameswritten across the sky as ogham threads are tracedbetween the stars”

“. . .our whispered words, faintly in the darkness, dissolvingwithin the trees—then, fleeting words of consolationwould not suffice if feigned, and flippant wordsconfessed reluctance—our wordswere meaningless uttered on the wind. . .”

“At Reed College, I learned very quickly that I didn't know nearly enough. I learned, first, that every student there was as smart as I was, and quite a few seemed smarter.”