for someone like myself who considers memory a slippery concept a lot of the time (what's the truth vs. what's the emotional truth and what happens when you discover they're not the same and does this discovery matter and should you alter any perceptions and beliefs upon discovery of this discrepancy?), i particularly liked author tim o'brien's words on the subject.
"memory's a strange thing. if you think about it, how much of today do i remember? well, i could—it's already abstracted, but i've already of course utterly obliterated every syllable that comes out of my mouth. it's gone, it's history. what about yesterday? i can't remember every dish I washed, every scab i picked, every person i encountered, every meal i ate. there's hundreds and thousands of them. and i would say that, out of my life, 99%, probably a lot more than that has been erased. that is, it's obliterated, erased, can't remember a detail. and I'm not just talking about childhood. i'm talking about adulthood, and people i've cared deeply about and i remember them in loving ways, and yet have a few snapshots of memory. we hold on to those and we call them memory. and that's memory? that little remnant of a lifetime, that's what's left to us? and we attach this word "memory" to it, which has a sound of encompassing all, but it doesn't. and that certainly applies to the things they carried. i mean, it's a book partly about memory. the author of that book is an older guy, and he's looking back and he's recycling events from different angles and sometimes inventing things as a way of seeking that which is gone."
(emphasis added to what i find the most interesting and problematic about memory)
the full video interview and transcript available at big think.