Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer

To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself.

The more we pack our lives with memories, the slower time seems to fly.”

Our subjective experience of time is highly variable. We all know that days can pass like weeks and months can feel like years, and that the opposite can be just as true: A month or year can zoom by in what feels like no time at all.

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it.

“If to remember is to be human, then remembering more means being more human,”

the secret to becoming a grand master of life was to learn old texts.

The Renaissance, with its fresh translations of ancient Greek texts, brought about a renewed fascination with Plato’s old idea that there is a transcendental ideal reality of which our own world is but a pale shadow.

Memory training, for Bruno, was the key to spiritual enlightenment.

When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.

Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches.