QuoteProject
I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of 'Dubliners' from Africa, but he says he never did.
John Banville
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Memories can be constructed and have a stronger impact than real events.

This quote highlights the subjective nature of memory and how our recollections can often be shaped by our emotions and experiences, sometimes even diverging from reality. It suggests that the significance of a memory can outweigh its factual accuracy, emphasizing the power of perception in shaping our understanding of the past.

Themes

MemoryPerceptionSubjectivityRecollectionExperience

In practice

Example use cases

A keynote speech about the importance of personal narrative in storytelling.

More from John Banville

I don't know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, it's very difficult to find.
John BanvilleRead
Why does the past seem so magical, so fraught, so luminous? At the time it was just, ugh, another boring bloody day. But, to look back on, it's a day full of miracles and light and extraordinary events. Why is this? What process do we apply to the past, to give it this vividness? I don't know.
John BanvilleRead
Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.
John BanvilleRead
Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.
John BanvilleRead
How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.
John BanvilleRead
All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.
John BanvilleRead

Similar quotes

A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy.
Mercy Otis WarrenRead
Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.
Saul AlinskyRead
What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
Paulo FreireRead
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
Samuel JohnsonRead
There is no holy life. There is no war between good and evil. There is no sin and no redemption. None of these things matter to the real you. But they all matter hugely to the false you, the one who believes in the separate self. You have tried to take your separate self, with all its loneliness and anxiety and pride, to the door of enlightenment. But it will never go through, because it is a ghost.
Deepak ChopraRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.