The One Memory of Flora Banks Quotes

“I am really here. Yet I know I am not. I am inside something that must be buried in my head. I am layers deep in my own brain.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“Don't panic, because everything is probably all right, and it it's not, panicking will make it worse.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“I want to see how I can exist by myself. I want to be allowed to live inside my memory.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“The inside of my head is out of control. It is on fire. It is snowing. It is a wild jungle. It is an Arctic wilderness. It is everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will happen, all at once.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“Time is a random thing. It is the thing that makes us older. Humans use it to organize the world. They have invented a system to try to make order from randomness. The other humans, all of them but me, live their lives by hours and minutes and days and seconds, but those things are nothing. The universe would laugh at our attempts to organize it, if it could be bothered to notice them.
Time is the thing that makes our bodies shrivel and decay. That is why people are scared of it.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“Although I don't know much about anything, I know that I have a story. I know that it is not over. There are shades and shadows of adventures and people and wild new places. Whatever Paris might turn out to be, and whatever Dr. Epstein is able to do, I want to be there to find out.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“I have woken up inside one of my own memories. I am really here, yet I know I am not.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“I think you're talking shit. You think we don't all feel like that? Like we're crazy, like we're not a real person, like we don't exist? Everyone feels that way sometimes. I can remember talking to you when you lost your bag. So what? You can't remember and that's not a bad thing. It doesn't make me better than you. I'm a stranger to you, but here's what I see:
I see a girl who has suffered a terrible damage to her brain. Someone who, it seems, is shut away by her parents to keep her safe. But inside there is a vibrant person, a traveler, and her memory of this boy Drake has propelled her into action. I think, Flora, that you came here not to find Drake but to find yourself. It wasn't Drake--he's an unlikely romantic hero, really--it was you. Didn't you come here, perhaps, because you heard him talking about the place he was going to, and it called to you?"
I don't know what to say. I don't say anything.
" Our come from Oslo, and Svalbard called me, even though I'm not really the rugged adventurous type. Like you, I had to come. Some of us are meant to be here. We need this place...We need to be small specks in wild nature, by the pole. The midnight sun. The midday darkness. The northern lights. It called to you, Flora, and you answered. You overcame everything, and you came here, alone. You are the bravest person I've ever met.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“Have you seen this cat?”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“...I want to look after her. I cannot begin to look after her: she looks after me and that's how we work.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“There is nothing in the universe but this. I smile. I do not talk to people. I just breathe and stare and exist.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“Il tempo è una cosa casuale. È la cosa che ci rende vecchi. Gli uomini lo usano per organizzare il mondo. Hanno inventato un sistema per cercare di dare ordine al caso. Gli altri esseri umani, tutti tranne me, hanno la loro vita scandita dal passare delle ore, dei minuti, dei giorni, dei secondi, ma tutte queste cose non sono niente. L'universo riderebbe dei nostri tentativi di organizzarlo, se si prendesse la briga di notarli.
Il tempo è la cosa che fa avvizzire e deteriorare il nostro corpo. Ecco perché tutti ne hanno paura. Ma questo non mi riguarda: io so che non invecchierò mai.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks

“I put a row of toys on the bed. A brown-haired Barbie doll, then a Lego ambulance...then a gray Buckbeak the Hippogriff.”
― Emily Barr, The One Memory of Flora Banks