We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (ed. Penguin, 2011) - ISBN: 9781101475973