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About this quote

What does it mean?
Without recording history, individual lives risk being forgotten entirely.
In plain terms
If we don't write things down, they are lost forever.
What can you take from it?
Document lives to prevent them from being forgotten.

Where it applies

  • writing family trees
  • archiving photos
  • oral histories

Putting it to work

  • write down family stories
  • save your documents

Questions to consider

  • What stories will be lost?
  • Who records your life?

Another view

Oral traditions can preserve history without writing.

More from Nicole Krauss

  1. Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

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  2. Perhaps that is what it means to be a father- to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.

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  3. When I got up again, I'd shed the only part of me that had ever thought I'd find words for even the smallest bit of life.

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