Amnesia Quotes

“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”
― Steven Wright

“Percy scowled. "I-I know you."
Nico raised his eyebrows. "Do you?”
― Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune

“All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.”
― Nathan Reese Maher

“Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.”
― Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“Luck can be the magic star that makes our day. Nonetheless, we slowly throttle the power of our creativity if we are overly dependent on luck. Being only reliant on chance events to achieve the essential steps of our fundamental goals in life might lead us into complacency or amnesia. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I see things and I hear things I do not understand. I'm a skilled, resourceful... vegetable!”
― Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”
― Michael Crichton

“Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up”
― Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“I drove by all the places we used to hang out getting wasted
I thought about our last kiss, how it felt the way you tasted
And even though your friends tell me you're doing fine

Are you somewhere feeling lonely even though he's right beside you?
When he says those words that hurt you, do you read the ones I wrote you?

Sometimes I start to wonder, was it just a lie?
If what we had was real, how could you be fine?

'Cause I'm not fine at all

I remember the day you told me you were leaving
I remember the make-up running down your face
And the dreams you left behind you didn't need them
Like every single wish we ever made
I wish that I could wake up with amnesia
And forget about the stupid little things
Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you
And the memories I never can escape

'Cause I'm not fine at all

The pictures that you sent me they're still living in my phone
I'll admit I like to see them, I'll admit I feel alone
And all my friends keep asking why I'm not around

It hurts to know you're happy, yeah, it hurts that you've moved on
It's hard to hear your name when I haven't seen you in so long

It's like we never happened, was it just a lie?
If what we had was real, how could you be fine?

'Cause I'm not fine at all

I remember the day you told me you were leaving
I remember the make-up running down your face
And the dreams you left behind you didn't need them
Like every single wish we ever made
I wish that I could wake up with amnesia
And forget about the stupid little things
Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you
And the memories I never can escape

If today I woke up with you right beside me
Like all of this was just some twisted dream
I'd hold you closer than I ever did before
And you'd never slip away
And you'd never hear me say

I remember the day you told me you were leaving
I remember the make-up running down your face
And the dreams you left behind you didn't need them
Like every single wish we ever made
I wish that I could wake up with amnesia
And forget about the stupid little things
Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you
And the memories I never can escape

'Cause I'm not fine at all
No, I'm really not fine at all
Tell me this is just a dream
'Cause I'm really not fine at all”
― 5 Seconds of Summer

“After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”
― Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories

“Sometimes waiting makes the culmination that much sweeter.”
― Lynn Raye Harris, Strangers in the Desert

“some truths that were too difficult and frightening to know.”
― Elyn R. Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

“Rafa straightens. ‘'Just let me figure a few things out.’'

‘'Like why you didn’t help me?’'

He shrugs, unrepentant. ‘'I thought it was an act. It didn’t cross my mind you wouldn’t fight.’'

‘'If I knew how to fight, Rafa, you wouldn’t still be conscious.’'

That brings a quick grin to his face. ‘'See, now that gives me hope all’s not lost. You’re still in there somewhere.’'

‘'Who’s still in here? Who is it you and those psychopaths think I am?’'

His smile fades. ‘'You really don’t know.”
― Paula Weston, Shadows

“Thanks to her condition, she’s become an endless source of embarrassment.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.”
― Beck

“She closes her blue eyes as if shutting them will erase her memories—the embarrassing ones, mostly.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Thomas thought about how he’d always felt a connection to her, ever since she arrived in the Glade. He wanted to dig a little more and see what she said:
-What are you talking about?
-Wish I knew. I’m just trying to bounce ideas off you to see if it sparks anything in your mind.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“I'm on a suicide mission. John, Paul, George, and Ringo get to go home, but my long and winding road ends here. I must have known all this when I volunteered. But to my amnesia-riddled brain this is new information. I'm going to die out here. And I'm going to die alone.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“It was the most uncomfortable feeling to have the knowledge, the muscle memory, the reactions ingrained into him, but to have absolutely no idea why or what from.”
― Victoria Lynn, Once I Knew

“Amnesia—A specific and significant block of time that has passed but that cannot be accounted for by memory.”
― Marlene Steinberg, Handbook for the Assessment of Dissociation: A Clinical Guide

“The patient mentioned that she compensates for her memory gaps by pretending that she recognizes people who claim to know her. In the follow-up section, later in the interview, she remarked, "I don't really have memories. I can basically tell you what people have told me, and then I have a memory of that, but it's not the actual memory."

These amnestic episodes have occurred without the use of drugs or alcohol and in the absence of acute medical illness, because the patient reports abstention from drugs or alcohol.”
― Marlene Steinberg, Handbook for the Assessment of Dissociation: A Clinical Guide

“There are distinct mood changes with borderline individuals that may be experienced as very alien or disconnected to the client. The loss of memory associated with DID, however, does not occur in BPD, and the mood changes do not constitute a change in personality to the extent that a part of the psyche takes control of the body outside the individual's consciousness.”
― Deborah Bray Haddock

“=Fierce-frightened,= Escape-from-bondage says to her.
“‘What?’
“=A name for you. My name for you, in my thoughts.=
“‘I have never had a name. Even the crazy old woman never gave me a name. She didn’t have any names to spare, I guess.’
“=She didn’t need to name you. You were the only one she had. But I know many. And I call you who you seem to me, fierce and frightened.=
“‘Is that who I am?’
“=I don’t know who you are. Only who you seem to me.=
“The difference makes her head start to ache.”
― Candas Jane Dorsey, Black Wine

“I would like also to recommend Random Harvest to those who can stay interested in Ronald Colman's amnesia for two hours and who could with pleasure eat a bowl of Yardley's shaving soap for breakfast, and Life Begins at 8:30 to those who can still be tickled by Monty Wooley's beard and Nunnally Johnson's lines (both good things in moderation), at the end of what seems hours. I also urge that Ravaged Earth, which is made up of Japanese atrocities, be withdrawn until, if ever, careful enough minds, if any, shall have determined whether or not there is any morally responsible means of turning it loose on the public.”
― James Agee, Agee on Film: Criticism and Comment on the Movies

“It felt like a miracle happened that day, a miracle named Emily.”
― Katerina Sukova, No Sleep: A Young Adult Mystery Novel

“Believe me, I'd love to remember you if I could.”
― Lilian Harris, Shattered Secrets

“Jimmie both was and wasn’t aware of this deep, tragic loss in himself, loss of himself. (If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.)”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

“...he solved all the puzzles, and could solve them easily; and he was far better and sharper than anyone else at games. And as he found this out, he grew fretful and restless again, and wandered the corridors, uneasy and bored and with a sense of indignity—games and puzzles were for children, a diversion. Clearly, passionately, he wanted something to do: he wanted to do, to be, to feel—and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose...”
― Oliver Sacks, Gratitude

“Clearly, passionately, he wanted something to do: he wanted to do, to be, to feel—and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose...”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales