“We remember almost nothing. The idea that we remember a great deal of the subtleties and details of our experiences, as if we are playing back a movie, is nothing more than an illusion, a construct of the brain. And this is perhaps the greatest secret in the study of memory: the astounding truth that, starting from very little information, the brain generates a reality and a past that make us who we are, despite the fact that this past, this collection of memories, is extremely slippery; despite the fact that the mere act of bringing a memory to our consciousness inevitably changes it; despite the fact that what underlies my awareness of a unique, immutable “self” that makes me who I am is constantly changing.”
― Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the "Jennifer Aniston Neuron"