Karen's gonna yell at me for not using an lj cut...
"I like to remember everything," Remus says, very quietly, so as not to wake him. "As it was. Because moments by themselves aren't enough; they're just -- they're like photographs. They move a little, they wave, but they aren't everything. You can look back on a moment and say 'In that moment I was happy' or, more often than not, 'In that moment I was uncomfortable' or 'In that moment I was sad' or 'In that moment we were all berks' but you can look back on everything and you think, 'That was good.' Because when all the moments come together, when all the songs meet up with one another, you get something whole and complete and wonderful, people you loved and people you hated and a fondness for them you may not be able to recapture but everything you remember about them being somehow more than they really were, because that's what remembering everything does. When I'm old, I think, I'll look back on this and I won't remember 'That time Sirius thought, if he lit a fart on fire, he could make a star come out of his arse' but I'll probably remember the stars themselves. I won't think 'He nearly choked me when he grabbed onto my tie' but I will think about the stupid doggy noises you're making, even right now, even while you're sleeping. It probably means remembering everything and not jumping from moment to moment like life is a game of leap-frog and should be taken experience to experience like lily-pads is foolish, because I won't remember you're often a berk and James is often a berk and Peter can be impressively inane and I am such a wet-blanket with such a large nose it's a miracle you don't hate me. I'll just remember that I talked for five minutes to a friend who was already sleeping and I was happy anyway."
--Remus Lupin, Shoebox Project