Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
Interpretation
Memories cannot be forced; they emerge naturally, and we must accept and serve them.
This quote by Edna O'Brien reflects the idea that memories and recollections are not under our direct control. They arise spontaneously and shape our experiences, suggesting that we play a passive role in recalling our past and must acknowledge the power of these memories in influencing our present and future.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about how memories shape our identity.
Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
Stillness is the altar of spirit.
Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.
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