How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
(A ghost-memory rises, here: a phantom moment, a shaky reflection in the pool of remembrance. I know how it would have felt when the scavengers took my heart. How it felt as the hunger birds, all mouth, tore into my chest and snatched out my heart, still pumping, and devoured it to get at what was hidden inside it. I know how that feels, as if it was truly a part of my life, of my death. And then the memory snips and rips, neatly, and—) (14.60)
Here we don't even have a memory, we have the ghost of a memory. The "snipping" and absence of a logical order of events indicates that Gran might have worked some of her magic. But once again, we are left to kind of revel in the ambiguity of the moment: did some old woman really "snip" the memory of his violent death and alter his perception of reality? Or is this part of the manifestation of a false memory that he believed in so hard that he made it true? So many questions in this book.
Quote #8
A small part of my mind remembered an alternate pattern of events and then lost it, as if I had woken from a comfortable sleep and looked around, pulled the bedclothes over me, and returned to my dream. (15.30)
We've all had moments like this. You're walking down the street, holding hands with Benedict Cumberbatch, and all of a sudden your alarm goes off and you're dragged back into the reality of getting up and having to live normal life. Boo. So you bury your face back into the pillow and try really hard to get back to old Benedict, but it's just not the same. You're awake, and you can't quite remember enough specifics of the dream to get back to it…
Quote #9
I was awash in memory, and I wanted to know what it meant. I said, "Is it true?" and felt foolish. Of all the questions I could have asked, I had asked that.
Old Mrs. Hempstock shrugged. "What you remembered? Probably. More or less. Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything." (Epilogue.8-9)
Gran is just a wealth of knowledge, isn't she? It's so true that no two people will remember an event the same way—so who will have the "true" recollection? Are memories just lies that we all tell ourselves, since they are so subjective? It's interesting that memory plays such a big part in this book. Memories are stories we tell ourselves, after all, and not only are we told a story in this book, but books are means of telling stories in their own right. Stories, stories, everywhere…