Mira Bartok, The Memory Palace Quotes

Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur.

We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don't want you to think that anything is wrong.

We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

I felt held hostage by her illness and by the backward mental health system that once again was incapable of helping our family in crisis.

I don't want to be the person who gasps in fear whenever she hears the sound of a doorbell or a phone. I just want to lose myself in these hills, in the river winding west to the city of bridges.

We humans are different--our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them. Our recollections change in their retelling.

Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says we are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember. Who am I, then, if my memory is impaired?