Mnemonic Quotes

“As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.”
― Sandra Boynton, Chocolate: The Consuming Passion

“Memory is a curse. I wasn't the first to say this, but I was proof of it. My memory was sharp. A thorn, a broken water glass, a jellyfish that crashed into me and reached back for more. My secret sense, which I have come to understand as my condition, gave me a way to encode information that was immediate and long-lasting, an inborn mnemonic device.
The ancient Greeks had a mnemonic device that called for thinking of a path, say through the streets of a familiar city, and depositing along the way the information that they wished to retain. At the corner of the Street of Wine Merchants, they would place fact number one; continuing ahead twenty paces to the Fountain of Bacchus, they would place fact number two; turning right onto the Street of Pleasure Houses by the front door of the Pavilion of Virgins (the name was ironic because even back then virgins were rare and mythical beings), they would place facts number three through ten (because it was there among the rare and mythical beings that they wanted to linger); and in that way their journey would continue on. To retrace this path in their mind was to gather up the facts again, easy and showy as red roadside poppies.
My own mnemonic device worked in similar fashion, but instead of a path there was a multicourse meal prepared by a mad scientist who knew and cared nothing about food. To revisit the dishes and their chaotic juxtaposition of flavors was to recall with precision those facts, from the trivial to the significant, that I have acquired, via the spoken word, during the course of my life.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“Havelock tried to remember what they said in the workshop about talking with people who'd been traumatized. There was a list. Four things. The mnemonic was BEST. He couldn’t remember what any of the letters stood for.”
― James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn

“Thyme, or 'dawn in paradise,'
I go there with the dead.
They die by someone else's hand
Whose souls sleep in my bed.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“If misinformation is inaccurate information, and disinformation is deliberate falsehoods — what's a simple way to remember the difference? 'Mis' for mistake, 'D' for deliberate.' I came up with it and it works for me!

(Link to full anthology in profile website)”
― Stewart Stafford