The Memory Police

I’ve been meaning to blog quotes from books because it’s just so much easier to search and find them later (than to scour through my notebooks etc, hunting for them). Fittingly, the first book in this project is one about forgetting.

“No, don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt, and you won’t even be particularly sad. One morning you’ll simply wake up and it will be over, before you’ve even realised. Lying still, eyes closed, ears pricked, trying to sense the flow of the morning air, you’ll feel that something has changed from the night before, and you’ll know that you’ve lost something, that something has been disappeared from the island.”

* 

“I mean, things are disappearing more quickly than they are being created, right?” I asked him.

He nodded and furrowed his brow, like someone suffering from a headache.

“What can the people on this island create?” I went on. “A few kinds of vegetable, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads… Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing – and the energy that goes along with the. It’s subtle but seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out, If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

“I suppose so,” he murmured, repeatedly pushing up the sleeves of his sweater and then pulling them back down in a manner that seemed more and more agitated. “Maybe because you write novels, you come up with these extreme ideas…No, I’m sorry, that’s rude – maybe I should say grand ideas. Isn’t that what it means to be a novelist? To come up with grand stories?” [novelist and old man]

*

“When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this? … a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry.” [the old man]

*

Regardless of what happened, it was almost certainly an unfortunate event, and moreover, simply talking about it could put you in danger. If on occasion a whole household suddenly went missing with no warning at all, the neighbors would simply pass their house with a furtive glance at the windows, hoping that the former inhabitants were safe somewhere. The citizens of this island were by now quite accustomed to these losses.

*

“The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can stop only when everything is in ashes. Why would I keep them when I don’t think I will be able to recall the meaning of the word ‘photograph’ much longer, not to mention the danger if the Memory Police find them.” [novelist to editor]

*

“Our primary function here is to assure that there are no delays in the process and that useless memories disappear quickly and easily. I’m sure you’d agree that there’s no point in holding on to them. If your big toe becomes infected with gangrene, you cut it off as soon as you can. If you do nothing, you end up losing the whole leg. The principle is the same. The only difference is that you can’t touch or see memories, or get inside the hearts they’re kept in. Each one of us hides them away in secret. So, since our adversary is invisible, we are forced to use our intuition.” [Memory Police officer]

*

“You’ll forget you ever had a voice,” he continued. “You may find it annoying at first, until you get used to it. You’ll move your lips as you just did, go looking for a typewriter, a notepad. But soon enough you’ll see how pointless it is. You have no need to talk, no need to utter a single word. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. Then, at least, you’ll be all mine.” [Typing teacher in writer’s novel]

*

There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories?

*

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so. [typist in the writer’s novel]

*

My degeneration was already too far advanced. If I took one step outside, my body would dissolve into a million pieces.

He was the only thing holding me together now.

*

The only sound was that of burning books.

*

“I thought I could hear the sound of my memory burning that night.”