Quote

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Memory and poetry go together, absolutely. It is a matter of preserving and of remembering things.

After you've read a novel, you only retain a vague memory of its contents. You remember the atmosphere, the odd image or phrase or vivid cameo.

I think that reading is always active. As a writer, you can only go so far; the reader meets you halfway, bringing his or her own experience to bear on everything you've written. What I mean is that it is not only the writer's memory that filters experience, but the reader's as well.

Memory narrativises itself.

Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience.

A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

Memory is a fiction we tell ourselves: just a piece of the truth.

Literature is the stringing together of pictures in words.