Amnesia Quotes

“They are entering the forest of amnesia, where things have lost their names.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Time would tell how much he would remember, if anything at all. She hoped to high heaven that it was the latter.”
― Victoria Lynn, Once I Knew

“Because DID requires the presence of amnesia, DID patients are, by DSM-5 definition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), unaware of some of their behavior in different states. Progress in treatment includes helping patients become more aware of, and in better control of, their behavior across all states. To those who have not had training in treating DID, this increased awareness may make it seem as if patients are creating new self-states, and “getting worse,” when in fact they are becoming aware of aspects of themselves for which they previously had limited or no awareness or control. Although some DID patients create new self-states in adulthood, clinicians strongly advise patients against so doing (Fine, 1989; ISSTD, 2011; Kluft, 1989).”
― Bethany L. Brand

“Lots of people with dissociative disorders are so used to losing time that they don’t even notice it anymore. Switching and the coming and going are so normal for them, and the covering for a “bad memory” are just natural parts of the day. In fact, it can be so natural, that many people with DID/MPD are firmly convinced that they don’t lose any time at all. However, a close examination of that belief can usually prove otherwise, but that is not an uncommon initial assumption.”
― Kathy Broady

“The brain is a frightening thing, capable of remembering so much of what we want it to forget and forgetting the one thing that we most want it to remember. And then, years later, it chooses to work, operating like an autonomous neural state, summoning a nightmare from beyond the city walls, the badlands of amnesia.”
― J.S. Monroe, Forget My Name

“I wish that I could wake up with amnesia
And forget about the stupid little things
Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you
And the memories I never can escape
'Cause I'm not fine at all
No, I'm really not fine at all
Tell me this is just a dream
'Cause I'm really not fine at all”
― 5 Seconds of Summer

“So many memories have dissipated in the mind-blunting of that period, when every thought, every feeling, every action was born out of intense anxiety.”
― Kate Mulgrew, How to Forget: A Daughter's Memoir

“I cannot remember’ is the most frequent sentence that my girlfriend hears.”
― Steven Magee

“I must remind myself that I'm probably as much a stranger to them as they are to me.”
― Lana Lowe, How Yellow Fades

“Fortunately, most of our vital physiological functions are involuntary, as some amongst us would forget them.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Desperateness sometimes makes us do something that gives someone, or some people, the impression that we suffer from forgetfulness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We shall never know now whether Nazism, the concentration camps or Hiroshima were intelligible or not: we are no longer part of the same mental universe. Victim and executioner are interchangeable, responsibility is diffrangible, dissoluble - such are the virtues of our marvellous interface. We no longer have the strength that forgetting gives: our amnesia is an amnesia of the image. Since everyone is guilty, who will declare an amnesty? As for autopsy, no one believes any longer in the anatomical accuracy of the facts: we have only models to work on. Even supposing the facts lay shining bright before our eyes, they would still not have the power to prove or convince. Consider how continual scrutiny of Nazism, of the gas chambers and so on, has merely rendered them less and less comprehensible, so that it has eventually become logical to ask an incredible question: 'But, in the last reckoning, did all those things really exist?' The question is perhaps an intolerable one, but the interesting thing here is what it is that makes it logically possible. And in fact what makes it possible is the media's way of replacing any event, any idea, any history, with any other, with the result that the more we scrutinize the facts, the more carefully we study details with a view to identifying causes, the greater is the tendency for them to cease to exist, and to cease to have existed.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“Most often, the "host" has some recognition of other parts of the personality, although a degree of amnesia may be involved. However, occasionally, the "host" does not know about the existence of other dissociative parts of the personality, and loses time when others dominate executive control (Putnam, Guroff, Silberman, Barban, & Post, 1986).

As C. R. Stern (1984) pointed out, it is more often the case that the "host" actively denies (active nonrealization) evidence of the existence of other dissociated parts of the personality rather than dissociative parts "hiding" themselves from the host. This nonrealization may be so severe that when presented with evidence of other dissociative parts, the host may "flee" from treatment.”
― Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization

“What could a man say? What did he say when the woman he loved, the woman he was admittedly obsessed with, told him she could change in the blink of an eye? That a monster once did things so horrendous to her she’d rather live knowing only a few weeks of her life rather than reclaiming all the years she had before.”
― Cambria Hebert, Amnesia

“Who did she expect to pick her up? A name had been on her lips. Someone she missed terribly, so much so that the physical longing stabbed at her chest and made her grab it, but there was no knife to pull out. It was invisible but real, and the blade was grinding deeper into her as she realised that she didn’t know who she was missing. There was no knight in shining armour to collect her, or if there was, she didn’t know who he was.”
― Pamela Harju, A World Other Than Her Own

“Amnestic disorders are a known aspect of very high altitude exposures in the sea level adapted human.”
― Steven Magee

“Educar apropiadamente es como tratar un caso de amnesia. Consiste en ayudar a entender como propio un pasado del que no se tiene memoria.”
― Nordstelo, El Universo Antrópico

“Forgetting about appointments has become a normal aspect of life for me.”
― Steven Magee

“An hour later Tianna was walking toward Planet Bang, wearing a sweater shell with sequins and an ankle-grazing skirt slit up the sides to the top of her thighs. She glanced at the waning moon and stopped. There was something important she had to do before the moon turned dark and it was in some way connected to Justin and Mason, but what? She stared at the sky as she continued, hoping the memory would come to her the way soccer and skateboarding had.
When she rounded the corner, the music grew louder. A neon sign throbbed pink, blue, green, and orange lights over the kids waiting to go inside. She recognized some of them. It seemed as if everyone had come with a friend or friends. Their heads turned and watched her as she walked to the end of the line.
She spread her hands through her hair and arched her back. As long as they were going to stare, she might as well give them a show. She twisted her body and stuck one long leg out from the slit in her skirt. Guys smiled back at her as she stretched her arms in a sexy pose. The girls mostly turned away, pretending they hadn't been checking out their competition.”
― Lynne Ewing, The Lost One

“You never forget how to dance, you just learn to filter the calls. You never forget how to play, you just need bigger balls. You stopped letting yourself fly and became an old fart. You didn’t forget how to love, you’re just using the balls in your head instead of the eyes of your heart.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“How curiously we are made. … The needle of life writes in the wax of the brain, and the record is our memories. Does the needle lift from the wax and leave no record? Or does a fog come down? What can we say? Do you know, I think the miracle is not that we sometimes can forget, but that we remember so much, so well. [Luther Grandison]”
― Charlotte Armstrong, The Unsuspected

“Aresztowanie Gomułki w latach stalinizmu zmazywało przynajmniej częściowo jego wcześniejsze zbrodnie. To prawda, komunista, odpowiedzialny za powojenne bezeceństwa, ale przecież sam też przez komunistów szykanowany. Przez te lata w odosobnieniu znalazł się po stronie cierpiących Polaków. Na nikogo lepszego wówczas nie mogli liczyć.”
― Piotr Lipiński, Gomułka. Władzy nie oddamy

“You are you even without your memories.”
― K. Weikel, Replay: Reboot

“Well, I'm naked... You're naked, we're in the same bed, and I don't remember coming here willingly. Put yourself in my shoes, what would you think?"
"You weren't wearing any when I found you."
"Wearing what?" He saw the confusion on her face and explained further.
"Shoes... You were barefoot when I found you."
"You found me? Where?"
"In the woods, two nights ago.”
― Anca Antoci, Forget Me Not

“Earth is a machine-like simulation that depends on humans creating emotions with their Shadow Bodies in order to suck divine love into this simulated reality. If you are enlightened, you cannot be controlled thus intruder races focused on DNA tampering in order to create amnesia of god realization and forgetfulness of your Higher Self aspects.”
― Deborah Bravandt

“I have told you,” Duncan said. “Until my memory returns, I can’t ask for Amber’s hand.”
“But you can take the rest of her, is that it?”
Duncan’s face darkened.
“The people of the keep are whispering,” Erik said. “Soon they will be talking openly about a foolish maid who lies with a man who has no intention of—”
“She has not—” Duncan began.
“Leave off,” Erik snarled. “It will come as surely as sparks fly upward! The passion between the two of you is strong enough to taste. I’ve seen nothing like it in my life.”
Silence was Duncan’s only response.
“Do you deny this?” Erik challenged.
Duncan closed his eyes. “No.”
Erik looked at Amber. “I needn’t ask you about your feelings. You look like a gem lit from within... You burn.”
“Is that such a terrible thing?” she asked painfully. “Should I be ashamed that I have finally found what every other woman takes for granted?”
“Lust,” Erik said bluntly.
“Nay! The profound pleasure of touching someone and not feeling pain.”
Shocked, Duncan looked at Amber. He started to ask what she meant, but she was talking again, her words urgent, driven by the tension that vibrated through her.
“Passion is part of it,” Amber said. “But only part. There is peace as well. There is laughter. There is...joy.”“
There is also prophecy,” Erik shot back. “Do you remember it?”
FORBIDDEN / 147”
― Elizabeth Lowell, Forbidden

“Cuando la bola espejada se me cayó en mi cabeza no sentí ningún dolor. Vi las caras de todos desfigurarse alrededor y la flor que tenía en el pelo tirada en el piso, abierta en una decena de pétalos. Las piernas dejaron de sostenerme. Desde el suelo vi rebotar la bola de espejos y sentí en ese instante cómo todos mis pensamientos se rompían en millones de partes. Lo que vino después fue una oscuridad fresca sin pensamientos, que me arrastró como una ola que retrocede, que vuelve al fondo del océano.”
― Carla Maliandi, La estirpe

“The horror, typically, is only felt by others–the patient, unaware, amnesiac for his amnesia, may continue what he is doing, quite unconcerned, and only discover later that he lost not only a day (as is common with ordinary alcoholic 'blackouts'), but half a lifetime, and never knew it. The fact that one can lose the greater part of a lifetime has peculiar, uncanny horror.”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Oliver Sacks

“My brain is like Swiss cheese.”
― Steven Magee

“No memories. No recollection of who he was, who he had been. No images of family, faces, places, or anything in between. He clenched his jaw as a feeling of failure overcame him. He so desperately wanted to remember.”
― Victoria Lynn, Once I Knew