Memoir Quotes - Page 10

• I've read my grandmother's memoirs and she served as a nurse during World War II. What they had to do was incredible.

  Jessica Brown Findlay

  War, Grandmother, Nurse

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The life we led was a proof of man's capacity for adaptation.I think that even the condemned souls in purgatory after time develop a sort of homely routine.That is ,by the way, why most prison memoirs are unreadable.The difficulty of conveying to the reader an idea of a nightmare world from which he has emerged makes the author depict the prisoner's state of mind as an uninterruped continuity of despair.He fears to appear frivolous or to spoil his effect by admitting that even in the depths of misery cheerfulness keeps breaking in.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

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• Much more than memoir; it's history.

  Russell Banks

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• I admire Joyce Maynard a lot, specifically her memoir "At Home in the World." Her writing is beautiful and fascinating and seemed to give me validation to the idea that I could write validly in earnest about my life with (my) very feminine point of view, and also that I could unapologetically explore the bad traits of my character (which I find to be more interesting to explore than the good traits), as well as explore other concepts that interest me like private vs public personas, age gap relationships, etc.

  Marie Calloway

  Beautiful, Home, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• As a writer, I was deliberately creating an alternate world, and then populating it with experiences and people that I knew in this world, but I'd shake up the mix considerably. And about the same time that the memoir was becoming the dominant popular literary form in the mid to late 90s, I started reading writers who were deliberately playing with the notion of "truth" and "fiction" - that struck me as a much more interesting way to tell certain stories, particularly in the realm of comedy.

  Kevin Keck

  Reading, Creating, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I’ve always liked to read about extremely wealthy people, especially when they are crazy (like Howard Hughes or Caligula.) While writing this book I did a lot of fun research on robber barons like Rockefeller and Morgan. But the most helpful stuff came from studying royal families and mad emperors. The best book I read was probably A King’s Own Story, which is the memoir of Edward VIII. Also, anything about Ivan the Terrible or Ted Turner.

  Simon Rich

  Kings, Fun, Crazy

  "Ridiculously Rich: The Rumpus Interview With Simon Rich". Interview with Maureen Miller, therumpus.net. June 9, 2010.

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• One of my big inspirations was Céleste Mogador. She was a courtesan who wrote her memoirs in order to pay off her debts, which is a hilarious gesture.

  Alexander Chee

  Inspiration, Order, Debt

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.

  Paul Auster

  Use, Wanted, Publishers

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy, Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• I didn't find this memoir of these two eccentric people so different from doing my memoirs of De Sade or Simone Weil. My parents in their own way are as odd as Sade.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Two, People, Parent

  "Conversation: Francine du Plessix Gray and Sean Wilsey". Interview with Boris Kachka, nymag.com.

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• As to why people like Joseph Lelyveld are writing memoirs, I think they're just catching on the coattails of the trend.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Writing, Thinking, Catching On

  "Conversation: Francine du Plessix Gray and Sean Wilsey". Interview with Boris Kachka, nymag.com.

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• I remember when I was writing my memoir and I was worried about what other people would think when they read it, and my mother, who can be this incredibly wise person, said that it really didn't matter because strangers who read it would never meet me anyway, and people I knew were aware of my secrets.

  Katy Lederer

  Wise, Mother, Writing

  Source: www.identitytheory.com

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• As a critic, I try to stay neutral about movies before I see them, but I really wanted "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to be great. It's based on a barbed memoir by Kim Barker called "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan." And its stars Tina Fey, out of her comfort zone, just as Barker was a fish out of water when, in 2004, she began covering the Afghanistan occupation for the Chicago Tribune.

  David Edelstein

  Stars, Water, Trying

  "Tina Fey's War-Zone 'Foxtrot' Falls Out Of Step". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. March 4, 2016.

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• I'm not into this memoir craze that's been going on for 20 years now and doesn't seem to ever let up. People just indiscriminately say "memoir" now when it's a person writing about their own life.

  Richard Hell

  Writing, Years, People

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

  Richard Hell

  Book, Moments, Thread

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I'd say, [writing memoir] not so much a model, but maybe to provide an insight, here or there, to help somebody come to terms with the dark corners of their own soul, to come to terms with the undecided, their own sense of self, and maybe help develop a capacity to love - to love wisdom, love justice.

  Cornel West

  Writing, Dark, Capacity To Love

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• I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.

  Steve Martin

  War, Views, Years

  "Born Standing Up". Book by Steve Martin, www.npr.org. November 20, 2007.

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• It was actually fun to write [memoir], because I went back to interview people my parents had taught or who had worked with them, and I learned a lot about them that I hadn't known.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Fun, Writing, People

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• I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir "Goodbye to All That," and a civilian memoir "Testament of Youth" by Vera Brittain .

  George Packer

  Goodbye, War, Writing

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Writing, Fiction, Writing Fiction

  "Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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• It was fascinating what a total interest he [John F. Kennedy] had in his tradecraft of being a politician. I didn't realize before that he was working on his memoirs all along, how he ran for Congress, that sort of thing.

  Chris Matthews

  Realizing, Politician, Congress

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• A producer came to me about doing a memoir, and at first I thought, "Well, it's a little bland." But then I realized that almost everything that's happened to me was the result of being in the right place at the right time. And I thought "Well, luck has a lot to do with it," so I wrote it from that perspective.

  Dick Van Dyke

  Perspective, Luck, Producers

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• If you read history, right, if you read [Mikhail] Gorbachev's memoirs, Gorbachev memoirs said the key thing in winning the Cold War was our insistence on nuclear defense, because they knew they couldn't match us.

  Rudy Giuliani

  War, Winning, Keys

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Doe, Body, Female

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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• In various memoir pieces, I have traced the trajectory of yearning through decisions made, good and bad, that had somehow kept the ambition on track.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Ambition, Track, Decision

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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• That desire to reach further is also where I ended my memoir, in 1994 in California, perhaps ironically, looking out to the Pacific and back to Asia, toward the not-yet-written.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  California, Desire, Asia

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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