Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight. — Jessica Savitch
Every man is a diary in which he writes one story while intending to write another. His humblest moment is when he compares the two — Hugh B. Brown
It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were. — Neil Simon
Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies. — Julio Cortazar
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. — John M. Barrie
A successful writer has a good memory and hopes that others do not have it. — Swedish Proverbs
Short Memoir Quotes
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game out of it. — Woody Allen
Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs. — David Ben-Gurion
Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children. — Shirley Jackson
For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true. — Akhil Sharma
True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world — Patricia Hampl
Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt. — Mary Karr
What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir. — Unknown
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was. — Jim Harrison
A good memory is needed once we have lied.
[Fr., Il faut bonne memoire apres qu'on a menti.] — Pierre Corneille
Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story. — David Herbert Donald
Autobiography Quotes
Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself. — Paramahansa Yogananda
Having lots of money while not having inner peace is like dying of thirst while bathing in the ocean. — Paramahansa Yogananda
Forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! control the present! Live supremely well now! This is the way of the wise. — Paramahansa Yogananda
Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. — Paramahansa Yogananda
But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile. — Nikola Tesla
He may be right about the importance of not fearing failure, but then again, you don’t hear speeches or read autobiographies by people who were unafraid of failure and then did indeed simply fail. — Oliver Burkeman
I don’t feel pressure. I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup. — Andrea Pirlo
[Autobiographies] are all the same - it's always rags-to-riches or I-slept-with-so-and-so. Damned if I'm going to say that. — Deborah Kerr
Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography. — Linda Grant
I was at home with my family and have a house full of puppies, and my cousin mentioned that with all the stories I have about my dogs, it might be a cool opportunity to make a memoir of sorts. — Joe Gatto
The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians. — Margaret Thatcher
There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism. — Raymond Chandler
I wanted to write about all my dogs that I know and love and are named after these desserts, and the experiences I've had with rescue and coming across these beautiful souls. — Joe Gatto
By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes. — Caroline Knapp
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. — David Letterman
Whatever shall we do in that remote spot? Well, we will write our memoirs. Work is the scythe of time. — Napoleon Bonaparte
To read Helen Macdonald's memoir, H Is for Hawk, is to feel as though Emily Bronte just turned up at your door, trailing all the windy, feral outdoors into your living room. — Maureen Corrigan
Let no family go into eternity without having left their memoirs for their children, their grandchildren, and their posterity. — Spencer W. Kimball
Admittedly, key archival documentation remains under lock and key and will be inaccessible for a long time to come. But enough material is available, in the form of declassified documents, memoirs, oral histories and journalistic treatments, to begin to piece together the story. — Fredrik Logevall
Defining oneself is a revolutionary act, and, as described in her memoir, Janet Mock fiercely fought to free herself with exquisite bravery and sensitivity. Redefining Realness is full of hope, dreams, and determination. It is a true American girl story. — Michaela Angela Davis
Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature. — James Frey
The current memoir craze has fostered the belief that confession is therapeutic, that therapy is redemptive and that redemption equals art, and it has encouraged the delusion that candor, daring and shamelessness are substitutes for craft, that the exposed life is the same thing as an examined one. — Michiko Kakutani
Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I'm not saying that every, you know, I'm not accusing every memoirist of being bipolar. But I think in a way it's kind of a gift. — Ayelet Waldman
I get kind of tired of the "But it's your life!" attitude about memoir. I wrote. I engaged in artistic production. I made a piece of art. Why the preciousness or mystical unicorns around "memoir"? I'm curious how you feel about it just now. — Lidia Yuknavitch
I think some of the best sex writing is going to come from the unexpected sources, not the same old same old. Like I'd love to see a memoir by a submissive man, because we've seen one from a professional submissive and dommes and strippers and hookers. I'd love to see more men writing frankly, not jokingly, about sex. — Rachel Kramer Bussel
I dont know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, its always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there. — Koren Zailckas
One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs. — Andre Dubus
Most memoirs about alcoholism, promiscuity, and addiction are deep, sobering tales full of scars that will never heal and include alarming statistics and reflection about recovery.This is not one of those memoirs. — Kate Madison
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room. — Mary McCarthy
I've been approached many times to write all sorts of books about my past and my personal life. I get interest from people who want to do reality shows, and somebody just offered me a huge amount of money to write my spiritual memoirs. I'm just not interested. — Steve Vai
I have been reading Madame Roland's memoirs and have come to the conclusion that she was a very over-rated woman; snobbish, vain, sentimental, envious - rather a German type. Her last days before her execution were spent in chronicling petty social snubs or triumphs of many years back. She was a democrat chiefly from envy of the noblesse. — Madame Roland
I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky ... by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.) In the Acts of the Apostles there are constant references to the Way and the New Man. — Dorothy Day
In the olden days, a memoir was something written by Churchill and people like that, because they had a grand experience and considered it useful for future generations. And then it became what it became - a public purging in which other people have the chance to judge you and then forgive you, perhaps learning something from your sorry example. — Aleksandar Hemon
Novels–and memoirs–are perhaps the most comprehensive reports humans can deliver, of their private experiences, to other humans. In these terms there is only one kind of novel: a human attempt to transfer or convey some part or version of their world of noumenon to another’s world of noumenon. — Tao Lin
I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering. — Oscar Wilde
A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving. I hope mine is interesting and self-serving. — William J. Clinton
I think that today's books, in which every quote, every conversation, is taken from a memoir, an autobiography, an interview, or what-have-you, are much more convincing. — Russell Freedman
I'm a memoir writer. I try to understand the world by taking experiences I have and making them into a story, whether it's a narrative memoir, blogging for The Huffington Post, writing poems, or talking on the screen about what has happened to me and how that relates to the world at large. — Staceyann Chin
On resigning as collaborator on the memoirs of the former Wallis Warfield Simpson, new summaries, 6 October 1955. You can't make the Duchess of Windsor into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. — Cleveland Amory
I read a lot. I especially read memoirs and biographies. It's very helpful when you're thinking about what's possible and what exists in human behavior; if it exists out there then it can exist on the stage. I really try to go to a lot of concerts. A lot of live events. I just try to keep my ears really, really open. — Jeanine Tesori
I believe the personal is the collective. One of the ironies of writing memoir is in using the "I" it becomes an alchemical "we." This is the sorcery of literature. — Terry Tempest Williams
A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it. — Richard Hell
Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective. — J. K. Rowling
In Conclusion
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