QuoteProject
Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.
Amy Bloom
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the duality of memory, highlighting how we often have one narrative of events while another, darker truth lingers beneath.

Amy Bloom's quote suggests that each person possesses two types of memories: one that we articulate and share with others, and another that remains hidden, filled with the discomfort or pain of past experiences. The juxtaposition of these memories reveals the complexity of our internal lives, where the surface story may gloss over deeper truths that are difficult to confront. This evokes a meditation on how we process trauma and the way we narrate our own histories.

Themes

MemoryTruthTraumaNarrativeExperience

In practice

Example use cases

In a therapy session to discuss how memories shape our identity.

More from Amy Bloom

You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.
Amy BloomRead
Boundaries are the lines we draw that mark off our autonomy and that of other people, that protect our privacy and that of others. Boundaries allow for intimate connection without dissolving or losing one's sense of self.
Amy BloomRead

Similar quotes

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
Arthur C. ClarkeRead
I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?
W. G. SebaldRead
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated - there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.
PlatoRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Amy Bloom | QuoteProject