Lori Collins

“It would be wrong to call them memories; they are moments of life, that man hat es erlebt- one has lived. They are inside me, part of me, branded into my skin, you might say - but they're not memories I want to live with, because there's no experience to be gained from them.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“It’s incredible how much is still there in the archives, like an underground world, a parallel world, still alive. Like the embers of a fire . . . all you have to do is blow on them to rekindle the flame.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“feel like some sense of memory makes us attracted to places our ancestors knew, celebrate dates that were important in the past, and become drawn to people whose family once crossed paths with ours without our even knowing it. Call it psychogenealogy, or cellular memory . . . all I know is, this isn’t just chance.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book