Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

Williams’ line frames human experience as something we mostly possess only in retrospect: what we call “life” is largely the accumulation of remembered scenes, sensations, and losses. The present, by contrast, is depicted as vanishingly brief—so fleeting that it resists being fully “caught” or owned. The thought aligns with a recurring Williams preoccupation: the way memory (often tender, distorted, or painful) becomes a refuge and a trap, shaping identity more powerfully than immediate reality. The quote also carries an implicit warning: if we live chiefly in recollection, we may miss the only moment in which choice and change are possible—the quickly passing now.