Stephen Snyder

Though I’ve tried, I’ve found no way to fill in the voids left by the Memory Police.

the only thing I could see were sheets of rain, obscuring everything—the trees in the yard, the fence, the telephone poles, the sky. Thick, suffocating sheets of rain.

we had things we wanted to say, but it seemed as though something weighed on our chests, preventing the words from coming out the moment we opened our mouths

Memories don’t just pile up—they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord

“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

one that offers some resistance, that is tantalizingly transparent and yet not, that seems to change as the light shines on it at different angles.”

I was particularly susceptible to that distinct variety of calm that comes before the start of a test. Those few seconds when everyone held his or her breath, when the sounds of prayers and organ music from the church had died away and our senses were concentrated in our fingers—those seconds completely unnerved me.

He had taken hold of the barest tip of my finger, but I was as overwhelmed as if he had taken me in his arms.

“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.”

The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can stop only when everything is in ashes