A Literary Prescription for

Memory

For all that we carry with us: the moments that stayed, and the ones we are afraid to lose.

Memory is the strange, invisible thread that holds a life together. It is where we keep the people we have loved and the moments that shaped us, and yet it is fickle, partial, forever quietly rewriting itself. We are, in large part, simply what we remember. To think about memory is to think about identity, loss, and what we most want to hold on to. These books and poems are for all of that: the moments that stayed, the ones that slipped away, and the tender business of remembering.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Some of these explore how memory actually works, and some are haunting novels about holding, losing and being shaped by the past. Non-fiction and fiction together, they circle one profound question: how much of who we are is simply what we remember, and what remains of us when memory goes.

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes · 2011

Barnes’s Booker-winning novel follows a retired man forced to reckon with how differently he remembers his own past. Precise and quietly devastating, it is a masterclass on the unreliability of memory and the stories we tell to live with ourselves. A short, profound read that will make you question your own recollections.

Flowers for Algernon

Daniel Keyes · 1966

Keyes’s heartbreaking novel follows a man whose intelligence is artificially raised and then lost again, told through his own changing words. It is a devastating meditation on memory, self and what we hold onto as it slips away. Unforgettable and profoundly moving for anyone who has watched a mind, their own or another’s, change.

The Giver

Lois Lowry · 1993

In Lowry’s classic, a boy in a painless, colourless society is chosen to carry the community’s lost memories, and discovers what a world without them truly costs. Spare and powerful, it argues that memory, even painful memory, is what makes us human. A thought-provoking read for any age about why we must not forget.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro · 2005

Ishiguro’s haunting novel is narrated in the voice of memory itself, a woman looking back on a childhood whose true meaning she only slowly understands. Restrained and deeply affecting, it shows how we use memory to make sense, and bear the weight, of our lives. Quietly shattering and impossible to forget.

The Buried Giant

Kazuo Ishiguro · 2015

In a mist-shrouded, half-mythical England, an elderly couple journey to find a son they can barely remember, in a land where memory itself has been stolen away. Strange and tender, it asks whether some things are better forgotten, and what love survives when memory fails. A haunting fable about remembering and letting go.

Moonwalking with Einstein

Joshua Foer · 2011

Journalist Joshua Foer sets out to understand memory and ends up competing in the world memory championships, learning the ancient arts of remembering along the way. Fascinating, funny and genuinely useful, it reveals how much more our memories can do. A delightful, practical read for anyone who wants to understand, and sharpen, their own mind.

Poems about memory

For what we hold onto

“Four Ducks on a Pond”

William Allingham, 1890

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years—
To remember with tears!

Allingham’s tiny, perfect poem captures the great mystery of memory: that it is so often not the grand events we keep, but some small, ordinary scene that lodges in the heart forever. Seven lines that say everything about how we remember. A treasure for anyone who carries an image, for no clear reason, all their life.

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from “The Great Lover”

Rupert Brooke, 1914

These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food…

Brooke sets out to preserve, against forgetting and death, a long, loving catalogue of the small sensory joys of being alive. It is memory used as gratitude, a deliberate act of holding on. A gorgeous poem for anyone who wants to notice, and keep, the ordinary treasures of their days before they slip away.

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from “Renouncement”

Alice Meynell, 1875

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
…But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
…With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.

Meynell writes about the memory we try, all day, not to summon, and which returns to us anyway the moment we let down our guard. It is one of the truest poems about how the past will not be commanded. Deeply moving for anyone haunted, tenderly, by a memory they cannot quite put down.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about memory to keep

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

Cesare Pavese

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Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero

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Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

L. M. Montgomery

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The palest ink is better than the best memory.

Chinese proverb

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We are, in the end, the stories we keep telling about ourselves. Choose which ones you carry forward with care.

Georgia Clare

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From Georgia

Holding the past gently

A calming practice for finding peace through words and reflection, and an essay on the quiet art of letting go of the parts of the past that weigh us down.

Finding Peace Through Words: A Literary Meditation

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A reflective guided practice that uses the stillness of words to settle the mind and hold the past, and the present, a little more gently.

Listen Now For Free

How to Let Go of the Past

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On keeping the memories that nourish you and gently releasing the ones that only weigh you down, so the past can rest where it belongs.

Read the Essay →

The Inner Peace Toolkit

Digital Self-Care Toolkit · Georgia Clare

2 guided meditations, an Inner Peace Journal, an affirmations eBook, 10 printable affirmation prints and 10 calming phone wallpapers — small daily practices to come back to whenever you need to slow down and reconnect with yourself.

Explore the Toolkit →

Questions people ask

Reading for Memory

Where should I start?

Start with The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, a short, brilliant novel about how unreliable, and how self-serving, our memories can be. And if you would rather understand how memory actually works, Moonwalking with Einstein is a fascinating, entertaining guide. The poems below are about the small things that, against all odds, we remember for years.

What can I read about memory?

Books that explore memory from every angle. Flowers for Algernon and The Giver ask what we are without our memories, while Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant explore, hauntingly, what it means to hold or lose the past. Or begin with the poems and the lines to keep further down the page. Memory, in the end, is much of what makes us who we are.

Which quotes about memory are worth keeping?

Quotes worth keeping include “Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.” (Oscar Wilde), “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” (Cesare Pavese) and “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” (Cicero). You will find these and more in the quotes section above.

Can reading really help me with memory?

It genuinely can, in more ways than one. The books on how memory works can sharpen and protect it, and the great novels of memory help you make sense of your own relationship with the past, what you hold, what you let go, and how much of who you are is simply what you remember. To read about memory is to understand yourself a little better.

Memory

Prescribed reading

For what we hold onto

Quotes about memory to keep

Holding the past gently

Reading for Memory

Where should I start?

What can I read about memory?

Which quotes about memory are worth keeping?

Can reading really help me with memory?

More prescriptions await.