Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

Wolff likens remembering to striking a blood vein: once a true memory is opened, it can surge with an intensity that overwhelms the storyteller. The line captures a paradox familiar to memoirists and fiction writers alike—forgetting is often less difficult than managing what returns when one begins to excavate the past. Memory is portrayed as involuntary, bodily, and potentially messy: it does not arrive in neat, controllable fragments but in a rush of associations, emotions, and details. The real craft (and emotional challenge) becomes shaping that flood into a coherent narrative without being swept away by it or betraying its force.