(seen at Caterina.net)

I would say first of all that duration is evidently only a thing of the mind. What persists is what we stop at. It is a moment we do not manage to classify, whose consequences we do not manage to exhaust and whose effects we do not manage to neutralize.
...

For example, when we are in the grip of a strong emotion, we give it duration, that is to say we privilege it to the point of refusing the events that preceded or that will follow it and which alone could assign it its correct place. The most durable memories thus bear witness to an intellectual and nearly physical tensing. In its passage through thought, through words, every memory appears like a sickness of language.

--Edmond Jabès