Skip to content

Memory Quote by Joy Kogawa

“some memories, too, might better be forgotten. didn't Obasan once say, "it is better to forget"? what purpose is served by hauling forth the jar of inedible food? if it is not seen, it does not horrify. what is past recall is past pain.” quote by Joy Kogawa — Download Open image

““some memories, too, might better be forgotten. didn't Obasan once say, "it is better to forget"? what purpose is served by hauling forth the jar of inedible food? if it is not seen, it does not horrify. what is past recall is past pain.””

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.2 out of 5 (4 ratings)

Memory Past pain

More by Joy Kogawa

“From my years of teaching I know it's the children who say nothing who are in trouble more than the ones who complain.”

Image

“I hate to admit it," she said, "but for all we hear about the States, Canada's capacity for racism seems even worse." "Worse?" "The American Japanese were interned as we were in Canada, and sent off to concentration camps, but their property wasn't liquidated as ours was. And look how quickly the communities reestablished themselves in Los Angeles and San…

Language to me is a tool a very clumsy tool. And words are garden tools with which to till the soil of one's life.

Image

“we're a "lower order of people" in one breath we are damned for being "unassailable" and the next there is fear that we'll assimilate.…

Image

“Some people," Aunt Emily answered sharply, "are so busy seeing all sides of every issue that they neutralize concern and prevent necessary action. There's…

Image

Fiction, on the other hand, is like swamp fire.

Image

“In a time like this, let us trust in God even more. To trust when life is easy is no trust.”

Image

People who talk a lot about their victimization make me uncomfortable. It's as if they use their suffering as weapons or badges of some…

Image

Poetry is a kind of gasp, and there it is, a spark on the page. Fiction, on the other hand, is like swamp fire.

Image

Explore all 10 Joy Kogawa quotes

More Memory quotes

I was 3-years-old - to this day it is a vivid memory. My family and I were on a boat, catching fish. As one fish was caught, he was writhing, then he was thrown against the side of the boat. You couldn't disguise what it was. This was what we did to animals to eat them. The animal went from…

Joaquin Phoenix

“Maybe there is something when it all ends. Maybe there is memory, memory of the person you loved, when you lived. Maybe this is…

Image

In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are…

Robert Aris Willmott

Image

Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

Image

Once upon a time. Ah forget it.

Image

I am told many children block out the memory of trauma. In fact, the healing process can only truly begin when we are willing…

Image

“The whole town rushed outside to celebrate this crowded minute when the time of suffering had ended and the time of forgetting had not…

Image

I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.

Image

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from…

Image

My first Olympics memory was watching Haile Gebrselassie in Sydney 2000. His sprint finish to defend his title really moved me.

Image

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Image

My greatest memories as a kid were playing sports with my dad and watching sports with my dad.

Image

Browse all 11,890 Memory quotes