chip away

[Madonna Halim]

"Take a man's memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull"
What does chip away mean here? take off?
Source: A quote by Mark Lawrence, in King of Thorns

 

[owlman5]

What does chip away mean here? take off?

Yes. It is a figurative way to say something like remove/take away a memory at a time. Literally speaking, if you chip away at something, you slowly destroy or alter it by removing chips from it with a tool like a chisel or an ice pick.

 

[tracer2]

"Take a man's memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull"
What does chip away mean here? take off?
Source: A quote by Mark Lawrence, in King of Thorns

Not "take off" exactly. More like "cut off"...like in the picture below. It shows a man "chipping away" at a stone surface with a tool and a hammer.