Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.
Interpretation
Memory can feel more substantial than reality itself.
In this quote, Arthur Golden reflects on the nature of memory and perception, suggesting that our recollections can sometimes hold more significance or reality than the current experiences we encounter. This speaks to the deeply personal and subjective nature of memory, where the past can shape our understanding of the present in profound ways.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of storytelling, one might quote this to emphasize how memories shape narratives.
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.
An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
Feminism starts out being very simple, and it ends up being a world view that questions hierarchy altogether.
In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you've planned for them.
The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.
Every man is our brother, and every manβs burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal.
Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.