The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the more we can remember about it.

Part of being creative is not being super-duper focused.

Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence.

Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches.

Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y in the first summer after I learned to drive. Z happened the weekend after I landed my first job. We remember events by positioning them in time relative to other events.

What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful.

When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.