How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
He remembered her as she had been in her youth, when she had dazzled him with the flutter of her hair, the rattle of her trinkets, her bell-like laughter, and her eagerness to embrace outlandish ideas and pursue her dreams. He cursed himself for having let her go and for all the time they both had lost. (11.92)
Jaime's memory, after twenty years of separation from Amanda, no longer corresponds to reality. When he's forced to confront a timeworn, sickly version of the woman he once loved, he has to revise the memory of her as a young, carefree girl who he'd cherished.
Quote #8
I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously – as the three Mora sisters said, who could see the spirits of all eras mingled in space. (Epilogue.45)
If memory is fragile – it can fade or be manipulated – and the life of an individual is too short to provide much historical perspective, then writing (and reading!) become necessary in order for anyone to be able to understand life.
Quote #9
Here, on my grandmother's table, is the stack of photographs […] everyone, in short, except the noble Jean de Satigny, of whom no scientific trace remains and whose very existence I have begun to doubt. (Epilogue.43)
The lack of documentation of Jean de Satigny's involvement in the family history makes it harder for Alba to believe in him. Here, as elsewhere, we're reminded of the importance of tangible evidence to lend credence to memory.