...What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. ("Till September Petronella") - Wide Sargasso Sea

There is no control over memory. Quite soon you find yourself being vague about an event which seemed so important at the time that you thought you'd never forget it. Or unable to recall the face of someone whom you could have sworn was there for ever. On the other hand, trivial and meaningless memories may stay with you for life. I can still shut my eyes and see Victoria grinding coffee on the pantry steps, the glass bookcase and the books in it, my father's pipe-rack, the leaves of the sandbox tree, the wallpaper of the bedroom in some shabby hotel, the hairdresser in Antibes. It's in this way that I remember buying the pink milanese silk underclothes, the assistant who sold them to me and coming into the street holding the parcel. (beginning of "On Not Shooting Sitting Birds")

I wonder too if I am terribly excited about something that has been done ages ago (1964)

...there is peace in despair in exactly the same way as there is despair in peace ("Outside the Machine")