...Reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and expectation in its only comfortable form — that of absolute faith — is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

A memory is not the thing remembered.

Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. … For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form — it may be called fleeting or eternal — is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.

Conscience is less an inner voice than the memory of a mother's glance.

Identity is much less a thing people "inherit" than it used to be.

This memory of my relative indifference is important because such indifference demonstrates powerfully the outsider’s inability to grasp the essence of the illness.

the remembrence of things past is not nessecarly the remeberance of things as they were

I am no longer as inspired by expertise as I once was. Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.

Translation: The noble soul aye to the gift far less
Gives heed, than to the giver’s kindliness.

In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

No extra hospital words. I don't want a relationship with disease. I want to have a relationship with death. That's important. But to have a relationship with disease — that's some kind of bourgeoisie invention. And I hate it.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but a poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.