“
Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix-tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future…If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly.
”
”
Thomas S. Monson
“
And since we don’t just forget things because they don’t matter but also forget things because they matter too much because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint's, it’s no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, to be a willful excursion into mythomania
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral)
“
On the brightening air drifts a scent of refreshed stone, moistened soil. She feels the earthy fingerprint of the cold morning air spread over her skin as if she is in the act of undressing. Her body has an early morning weightlessness about it. She might almost be a memory of herself. Conjured up by the sleeping city.
”
”
Glenn Haybittle (The Way Back to Florence)
“
Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I’m a mix tape, a cassette that’s been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love is a Mix Tape)
“
We all leave something behind us. A bird in flight will lose a snow-white feather, and flowers in the hedgerows will drop their petals. And people? We leave memories. Footprints in the dust and fingerprints on everything we've touched, warmth in every hand we've held. We become stories that are spoken of, for always. And in this way, we carry on.
”
”
Susan E. Fletcher
“
I am wishing of a memory, where you gave me everything you had
and where I offered you the pieces that were left
of me.
”
”
Richard Pérez (If Only Time Were Enough)
“
A person’s library is like a fingerprint. The books on their shelves are a collection of memories and wishes. They’re as unique as a snowflake.
”
”
Ellery Adams (The Vanishing Type (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #5))
“
I am reclaiming The restaurants, The bars, the parks, the storefronts crosshatched With your fingerprints. I fold the memories into Cranes, tuck them away. - Making room
”
”
Sophia Elaine Hanson (hummingbird)
“
The essence of this knowledge was the ability to `see all' and to `know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'? · Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to `see far'. Thereafter `their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close ...' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it `the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Popol Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see `things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who `examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring `the round face of the earth'. 7 Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered not only for studying `the round face of the earth' but for their contemplation of `the arch of heaven'?
”
”
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
“
How long could we remain true to the girls? How long could we keep their memory pure? As it was, we didn’t know them any longer, and their new habits—of opening a window, for instance, to throw out a wadded paper towel—made us wonder if we had ever really known them, or if our vigilance had been only the fingerprinting of phantoms.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
“
I turned my palms upward in the sunlight. In an instant, they felt warm, as though the light were seeping into the skin, soaking into the very lines of my fingerprints. The light ruled over everything out here. Bathed in light, each object glowed with the brilliant colour of summer. Even intangibles such as time and memory shared the goodness of the summer light.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
“
How do I describe him now? Where do I start? How do I distill the first impression created in those few distance seconds? How do I extract his finished portrait, composed of layer upon layer of color, back into the pale, hasty pencil sketch that my eyes drew the first time they landed on him? How can I use a mere few lines to paint the whole picture with all its breadth and depth? Is it even possible to attain that sort of scrutiny, that measure of lucidity, when the hands of loss keep touching the memory, staining it with their fingerprints?
”
”
Dorit Rabinyan (All the Rivers)
“
I’ve never understood why the heart always reacts. A shot of adrenaline is all it takes, triggered by a thought. A word. A memory. And every time the reaction is singular, a fingerprint of a moment. Sometimes it’s a flutter, a flicker of wings in your chest. Others, it’s a relentless vise that stops the beat, if only for a second. It might be a hot burn, spreading like wildfire in your ribs, or an icy cold space, empty and void. But the heart always reacts. Even after seven years, just hearing his name inspired any of those reactions or a dozen more. And
”
”
Staci Hart (A Thousand Letters (The Austens #2))
“
No one wants to learn an instrument, Rachel. It's grueling repetition. And besides, you're too old to start. Concert violinists who learn the traditional way begin when they're six or seven."
Risa can't help but listen to the irritating conversation taking place between the well-dressed woman and her fashionably disheveled teenage daughter.
"It's bad enough they'd be messing in my brain and giving me a NeuroWeave," the girl whines. "But why do I have to have the hands, too? I like my hands!"
The mother laughs. "Honey, you've got your father's stubby, chubby little fingers. Trading up will only do you good in life, and it's common knowledge that a musical NeuroWeave requires muscle memory to complete the brain-body connection."
"There are no muscles in the fingers!" the girl announces triumphantly. "I learned that in school."
The mother gives her a long-suffering sigh.
"Think of them like a pair of gloves, Rachel. Fancy silk gloves, like a princess wears."
Risa can't stand it anymore. Making sure she's low enough so that her face can't be seen, she gets up, and as she walks past them, she says, "You'll have someone else's fingerprints.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (UnSouled (Unwind, #3))
“
How long could we remain true to the girls? How long could we keep their memory pure? As it was, we didn’t know them any longer, and their new habits - of opening windows, for instance, to throw out a wadded paper towel - made us wonder if our vigilance had been only the fingerprinting of phantoms. Our talismans ceased to work. Lux’s tartan, when touched, summoned only a hazy memory of her wearing it in class - one bored hand fiddling with the silver kilt pin, undoing it, leaving the folds unfastened on her bare knees, about to fall open any minute but never… We had to rub the skirt for minutes to see it clearly. And every other slide in our carousel began to fade in the same way, or we clicked and absolutely nothing fell into the projection slot, leaving us staring at goose bumps on a white wall.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
“
Yet for all my disconcertion it is the mortal she, and not the divine, who shines for me still, with however tarnished a gleam, amidst the shadows of what is gone. She is in my memory her own avatar. Which is the more real, the woman reclining on the grassy bank of my recollections, or the strew of dust and dried marrow that is all the earth any longer retains of her? No doubt for others elsewhere she persists, a moving figure in the waxworks of memory, but their version will be different from mine, and from each other’s. Thus in the minds of the many does the one ramify and disperse. It does not last, it cannot, it is not immortality. We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations. I remember Anna, our daughter Claire will remember Anna and remember me, then Claire will be gone and there will be those who remember her but not us, and that will be our final dissolution. True, there will be something of us that will remain, a fading photograph, a lock of hair, a few fingerprints, a sprinkling of atoms in the air of the room where we breathed our last, yet none of this will be us, what we are and were, but only the dust of the dead.
”
”
John Banville (The Sea)
“
Language is a person's signature, like his fingerprints. It contains his birth and growth, memories and past.
”
”
Jung-Myung Lee (The Investigation)
“
The last barbecue I went to was at Sarah's house
and I almost text her to tell her
how when you have so many memories
with one person, it's like a crime scene after they're gone.
Fingerprints everywhere, sometimes visible
and sometimes only popping out at the eye
when a light is shined from a specific angle.
”
”
Olivia A. Cole (Dear Medusa (A Novel in Verse))
“
On a gray afternoon I sit in a silent room and contemplate din. In the street a single car passes - a rapid bass vowel - and then it is quiet again. So what is this uproar, this hubbub, this heaving rumble of zigzag static I keep hearing? This echo chamber spooling out spirals of chaos? An unmistakable noise as clearly mine as fingerprint or twist of DNA: the thrum of regret, of memory, of defeat, of mutability, of bitter fear, made up of shame and ambition and anger and vanity and wishing. The soundtrack of a movie of the future, an anticipatory ribbon of scenes long dreaded, of daydreams without a prayer of materializing. Or else: the replay of unforgotten conversations, humiliating, awkward, indelible. Mainly it is the buzz of the inescapably mundane, the little daily voice that insists and insists: right now, not now, too late, too soon, why not, better not, turn it on, turn it off, notice this, notice that, be sure to take care of, remember not to. The nonstop chatter that gossips, worries, envies, invokes, yearns, condemns, self-condemns.
”
”
Cynthia Ozick (The Din In The Head)
“
A vivid image of a man with a pencil through his left eye orbit flashed before me, complete with bloody smudges of my fingerprints on the yellow shaft of the pencil. Thank you, dear memory, for once again attempting to sabotage my conversation.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
“
And he'd said nothing or something that amounted to nothing, and I tongued this memory like a burn in my mouth until the bathwater cooled and shook me back into my body where my fingerprints were ruffled.
”
”
Catherine Lacey (Nobody Is Ever Missing)
“
I’ve never understood why the heart always reacts. A shot of adrenaline is all it takes, triggered by a thought. A word. A memory. And every time the reaction is singular, a fingerprint of a moment. Sometimes it’s a flutter, a flicker of wings in your chest. Others, it’s a relentless vise that stops the beat, if only for a second. It might be a hot burn, spreading like wildfire in your ribs, or an icy cold space, empty and void. But the heart always reacts. Even after seven years, just hearing his name inspired any of those reactions or a dozen more. And there was one every single time.
”
”
Staci Hart (A Thousand Letters (The Austens #2))
“
Her father had once told her that water has a memory; that every rock, every stone, every grain of muddy sediment leaves something of a fingerprint in the water that flows over it. Grace liked this idea, imagining the water of the great lakes and oceans of the world to echo with the memories of the places, people, and events it had passed on its journey.
”
”
Hazel Gaynor (The Girl Who Came Home)
“
That's what we do. Embellish. Decorate. Unvarnished truth has only limited appeal. Some events are a joy to recall, but others are best modified, even forgotten. They live in some lumber-room of the mind, housed somewhere you wouldn't want to go alone and never after dark. If I make a mistake in my work or if I change my mind, I can unpick. Undo what I've done. I can make good my errors and no one is the wiser. If they looked, even through a magnifying glass, all observers would see would be the tiny holes where my needle had travelled. I can erase even that evidence by scratching carefully at the weave of the lining with my needle, until the holes are no longer visible. But life isn't like that. Mistakes once made are rarely reversible. The holes they leave in the fabric of life aren't tiny and they can't be scratched away. You have to live with them as best you can. Work round them. That's why you have to come to terms with memory. You can't obliterate the past or eradicate it from the mind, even when, for our own good, memory enfolds us in a blanket of forgetfulness. There are always traces left, marks where time gripped us and left its telltale fingerprint.
”
”
Linda Gillard (Untying the Knot)
“
How can I move on
When your fingerprints are still on my heart
Your voice still resonates all through my nerves
Your smile still ingrained in my soul
Nothing lasts forever is a lie
You’ll live in my memories and
I will love you forever
There is no goodbye!!
”
”
T Shree
“
It's too late to sleep anyway. The coffee's gone cold, so I just heat up another pot. Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I'm a mix tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.
Press play.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town"
I seem to recognize your face
Haunting, familiar, yet I can't seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me
All these changes taking place
I wish I'd seen the place
But no one's ever taken me
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
I swear I recognize your breath
Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising
Me you wouldn't recall for I'm not my former
It's hard when you're stuck upon the shelf
I changed by not changing at all
Small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that's what no one wants to see
I just wanna scream "Hello!"
My God it's been so long
Never dreamed you'd return
But now here you are, and here I am
Hearts and thoughts they fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away
Pearl Jam, Vs. (1993)
”
”
Pearl Jam
“
we both mistake solitude for safety find comfort in wishing
ourselves untouchable you a cloud & i fog daily i remind myself
every life must be s e e d e d with fingerprints
i say a prayer to an unnameable god the constant motion rotating
constellations across a sky that will always be my favorite blue
the cactus that has & will continue to bloom every spring of my life
& hope it's enough to find you whistling a song only birds sing
in morning's memory waiting for me to be present in our living
”
”
Laura Villareal (Poems to Carry in Your Pocket)
“
No one can take her away from you, Camilla. She’s your daughter. You’re bound for life, and by something that runs much deeper than blood and shared memories. You’re bound by your echoes.” She turns back, a little crease between her brows. “Echoes?” I smile, because she looks like she needs a smile. “It’s something my mother used to say. She believed we each possess an echo, a kind of spiritual fingerprint, and that those echoes connect us to the ones we love, binding us forever.
”
”
Barbara Davis (The Keeper of Happy Endings)
“
I turned my palms upward in the sunlight. In an instant, they felt warm, as though the light were seeping into the skin, soaking into the very lines of my fingerprints. The light ruled over everything out here. Bathed in light, each object glowed with the brilliant color of summer. Even intangibles such as time and memory shared the goodness of the summer light.
”
”
Haruki Murakami
“
And so here I am, left with the one true currency all of us possess.” Eaton lightly taps his index finger against his temple. “When we get to the point of death, whether we know it’s coming or not, all we’ve ever accumulated in life that matters are memories. Things we’ve done. People we’ve loved. Lands we’ve explored. Memories are the truest measure of wealth, and yet they can’t be passed down, not really. Stories can be told, but our memories, those things as unique as our fingerprints, all crumble along with our bones.
”
”
Carter Wilson (The Dead Girl in 2A)
“
There was no one like her on the whole of the planet, no one who had ever lived or ever would. There was not a single other person with her fingerprints, with her memories, with the blood beating in her veins. She was herself, and she was alive right now, despite everything.
”
”
Eva Woods (Something Like Happy)
“
tracing –Can track the fingerprint of any electronic device from the web of satellites. Tekfabrik –Multipurpose nano-fabric capable of changing color, size, and texture. Self-cleaning. Thread –High capacity memory stick about the size of a short piece of angel hair pasta. Torgon –Curse word similar to f-word. Also used as torg, torged, or torging. Traditionals –Name used to describe ordinary humans without implants, etc. Trapicers –Mysterious revolutionary group. Tru-chair –Chair that conforms to the sitter’s anatomy and delivers acupressure. Uses energy by harvesting body heat. VM –Virtual
”
”
Brandt Legg (The Last Librarian (The Justar Journal #1))
“
Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town"
I seem to recognize your face
Haunting familiar, yet I can't seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me
All these changes taking place
I wish I'd seen the place
But no one's ever taken me
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
I swear I recognize your breath
Memories, like fingerprints, are slowly raising
Me you wouldn't recall for I'm not my former
It's hard when you're stuck upon the shelf
I changed by not changing at all
Small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that's what no one wants to see
I just want to scream, "Hello
My god, its been so long, never dreamed you'd return
But now here you are and here I am"
Hearts and thoughts they fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away
Hearts and thoughts they fade
Pearl Jam, Vs (1993)
”
”
Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam - VS)
“
There is no goodbye.
How can I move on
When your fingerprints are still on my heart
Your voice still resonates all through my nerves
Your smile is still ingrained in my soul
Nothing lasts forever is a lie
You’ll live in my memories and
I will love you forever
There is no goodbye!!
”
”
T Shree (Silent Whispers: Echoes of the Unspoken Heart)
“
Dear Heavenly Father,
We step into this day with holy anticipation.
Not just surviving but expecting.
Expecting heaven to lean in.
Expecting signs that speak louder than doubt.
Expecting wonders that rewrite our story.
We thank You for the gift of another sunrise.
Another inhale.
Another chance to say yes to purpose,
To walk in joy,
To forgive and be forgiven.
For those carrying grief,
Wrap them in Your presence like a weighted blanket of peace.
Let memories be gentle,
Let tears be healing,
And let strength rise like a quiet roar within them.
You are near to the brokenhearted—
And today, we declare comfort will visit every aching soul.
You are the God who doesn’t discard—You restores.
You don’t cancel….You call again.
You don’t forge….You favor.
So we walk boldly into this day,
Knowing we are not behind, not overlooked, not last.
We are right on time for the miracle.
Let laughter return.
Let creativity flow.
Let divine appointments find us.
And let this day be marked by Your fingerprints.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
”
”
Dr. Angela L. Hood