Words and remembrance

If you need a Sunday diversion, my newest post is up now on Book Riot:

It’s commonly accepted (and, I suppose, scientifically confirmed) that as we get older, our memory starts to fade. Of course, this does not happen evenly—how else to explain that while I have forgotten just about everything I ever heard in high-school calculus class, I can still recall nearly every line of dialogue from So I Married an Axe Murderer…, which I saw and was encoded onto my brain at roughly the same time in my life? More specifically, when it comes to language, why do some things make it into our long-term memories while other moments and phrases never stand a chance?

Don't worry, a team of computer scientists at Cornell seems to have come up with a theory, based on memorable quotes from movies. Also you can try your hand at recognizing (remembering?) so-called memorable lines from classic books (after all, this is Book Riot).

See the whole thing here.