50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in The Memory Police

Click here to download your own copy of quotes from The Memory Police!

#11: But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry.

• Techniques: Analogy, imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Narrator’s mother
• Chapter 7

#12 A heart has no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much.

• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery, symbolism and personification
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 11

#13: I don’t really know why I’m crying. I can’t explain it myself, much less stop it.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, R
• Chapter 17

Loss and Absence

#14: My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

• Techniques: Simile, metaphor and personification
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 1

#15: But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance.

• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism and parallelism
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 11

#16: …he has never read a single page of any of my books.
Once, when I told him I’d love to know what he thinks of them, he demurred.
“I couldn’t possibly say,” he said. “If you read a novel to the end, then it’s over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I’d much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, R
• Chapter  3

#17: “In general,” he continued, “most things you worry about end up being no more than that—just worries.”

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Old man, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter  9

#18: Time is a great healer. It just flows on all of its own accord.

• Techniques: Symbolism, metaphor and imagery
• Characters: Old man, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 7

#19: People—and I’m no exception—seem capable of forgetting almost anything, much as if our island were unable to float in anything but an expanse of totally empty sea.

• Techniques: Symbolism, imagery and metaphor
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 2

#20: If spring never comes, does that mean summer won’t either? How will the crops grow when the fields are covered with snow?

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, The Typing Teacher
• Chapter 15

#21: What can the people on this island create?” I went on. “A few kinds of vegetables, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads…Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing—and the energy that goes along with them. It’s subtle but it seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out. If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, Narrators mother
• Chapter 7

#22: I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes

• Techniques: Imagery and symbolism
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 11

#22: No matter how hard I listened, there was never any sign of someone living under the floor, and yet this silence made me all the more conscious of his existence.

• Techniques: Symbolism and imagery
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, R
• Chapter 11

#23: Perhaps this was just evidence that his body was adapting to the secret room. Perhaps it was necessary to rid oneself of everything that was superfluous in order to immerse completely in this airless, soundproof, narrow space shrouded in the fear of discovery and arrest. 

• Techniques: Personification, Imagery and symbolism,
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 14

#24: Memories don’t just pile up—they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord. Though the process, for me, is quite different from what happens to the rest of you when something disappears from the island.

• Techniques: Imagery and symbolism
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 11

#25: Few people here have any need of novels

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 3

#26: The traces of my father’s presence, which I had done my best to preserve, had vanished, replaced by an emptiness that would not be filled. I stood in the middle of that emptiness, feeling myself on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth.

• Techniques: Metaphor, personification, imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 2

#27: But what if human beings themselves disappear?” I asked.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, Oldman
• Chapter 19

#28: Closed in the hidden room, I continued to disappear.

• Techniques: Imagery, symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 28

#29: You’ll see for yourself. Something will disappear from your life.

• Techniques: Foreshadowing
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, Narrator’s mother
• Chapter 1

Power and Control

#30: Men who start by burning books end by burning other men

• Techniques: Foreshadowing
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, Old man
• Chapter 19

#31: I don’t know. Maybe there’s a place out there where people whose hearts aren’t empty can go on living.

• Techniques: Symbolism and foreshadowing
• Characters: Old man, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 14

#32: No matter how careful we are, we all leave behind little bits of ourselves as we go about our lives. Hair, sweat, fingernails, tears…any of which can be tested. No one can escape.

• Techniques: Imagery, symbolism and foreshadowing
• Characters: R
• Chapter 4

#33: But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. 

• Techniques: Imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 18

#34: If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.

• Techniques: Hyperbole, imagery, metaphor and irony
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 18

#35: I was glad that I was able to erase your voice. Did you know that an insect will fall silent if you cut off its antennae? It will just sit there, as if frozen, and even refuse to eat. The same as you, really.

• Techniques: Irony, imagery, symbolism and metaphor
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, Typing teacher
• Chapter 15

#36: After sitting for so long in the ruined cabin, the objects we had taken must have been shocked when we pulled them out into the world. I could almost sense their fear, coming through the bags.

• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism and imagery
• Characters: Old man, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 23

#37: You have to stop worrying about things like that. The disappearances are beyond our control. They have nothing to do with us. We’re all going to die anyway, someday, so what’s the difference? We simply have to leave things to fate.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Old man, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 19

#38: When you lost your voice, you lost the ability to make sense of yourself. But don’t worry. You’ll be staying right here. You’ll live among the fading voices trapped in these typewriters, and I’ll be here with you, giving you instructions. Nothing too difficult.

• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery, personification and reassurance
• Characters: Typing teacher, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 15

#39: And what will happen if words disappear? I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true.

• Techniques: Symbolism and imagery
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 4

#40: In recompense for a mind that was able to retain everything, every memory, perhaps it was necessary that the body gradually fade away.

• Techniques: Juxtaposition, personification, paradox and alliteration
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 14

Resistance and Defiance

#41: No one can erase the stories!

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 19

#42: When the surface of your soul begins to stir, I imagine you want to capture the sensation in writing.

• Techniques: Imagery
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 22

#43: I suspect the only reason I’ve been able to go on writing is that I’ve had your heart by my side all along.

• Techniques: Metaphor, personification, imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator, R
• Chapter 11

#44: It’s the most beautiful disappearance ever.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 6

#45: I suppose memories live here and there in the body,” the old man said, moving his hand from his chest to the top of his head. “But they’re invisible, aren’t they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed. But I suppose you’re right when you say we should do everything we can to bring back memories of the things that have disappeared.

• Techniques: Imagery symbolism and metaphor
• Characters: Old man
• Chapter 24

#46: Important things remain important things, no matter how much the world changes.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: R
• Chapter 12

#47: In reserve for the most important thing: the present

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 16

#48: Having written this phrase, I set down my pencil. My new novel wasn’t going very well. I seemed to be writing in circles, going backward, or running into dead ends, with no idea what should come next. Still, I often encountered this sort of writer’s block, and I no longer took much notice of it.

• Techniques: Imagery, personification and metaphor
• Characters: Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 6

#49: We’re all free to do as we choose with our own memories

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: R, Old man
• Chapter 24

#50: They may be nothing more than scraps of paper, but they capture something profound. Light and wind and air, the tenderness or joy of the photographer, the bashfulness or pleasure of the subject. You have to guard these things forever in your heart. That’s why photographs are taken in the first place.

• Techniques: Metaphor, personification, symbolism and imagery
• Characters: R, Unnamed narrator
• Chapter 12