“There is no control over memory. Soon you find yourself being vague about an event which seemed so important at the time that you thought you’d never forget it. Or unable to recall the face of someone who you could have sworn was there forever. On the other hand, trivial and meaningless memories may stay with you for life. For example, I can still shut my eyes and see Victoria grinding coffee on the pantry steps, the glass bookcase and the books in it, my father’s pipe rack, the leaves of the sandbox tree, the wallpaper of the bedroom of some shabby hotel, the hairdresser in Antibes. It’s in this way that I remember buying the pink Milanese-silk underclothes, the assistant who sold them to me, and coming into Bond Street holding the parcel.”
From the New Yorker