Memoir Quotes - Page 2

• I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.

  Tim O'Brien

  Writing, Hands, Trying

  2 Copy quote

• I keep thinking my father gave me Turgenev, and then I realize at some point, Oh, this is a false memory. I mean, that's one of the things that interests me about memoir. It should be as much about how we remember, and that includes false memories, and the realization that one is having a false memory. That's the kind of an interesting way of layering the whole experience of recollection.

  Marco Roth

  Memories, Father, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, People

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Taken, Thinking

  Source: www.hbook.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice.

  Jeannette Walls

  Writing, Voice, Challenges

  0 Copy quote

• I could have written a misery memoir and instead I tried to make it funny. I never complained.

  Caitlin Moran

  Misery, Written

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Art, Attitude, Tired

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• What are you going to do with astronauts who first reach the surface of Mars and then turn around and rocket back home-ward? What are they going to do, write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don't they stay there on Mars?

  Buzz Aldrin

  Home, Writing, Views

  Buzz Aldrin, Leonard David (2013). “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration”, p.167, National Geographic Books

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• a lot of trouble has been caused by memoirs. Indiscreet revelations, that sort of thing. People who have been close as an oyster all their lives seem positively to relish causing trouble when they themselves shall be comfortably dead.

  Agatha Christie

  Oysters, People, Trouble

  3 Copy quote

• But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.

  Said Sayrafiezadeh

  Real, Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most obvious difference between writing novels and memoirs is that my memoirs are true stories, and explore certain experiences I've lived, and thus operate within the boundaries of memory and fact.

  Danielle Trussoni

  Memories, Writing, Differences

  Source: therumpus.net

  1 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's an ethical pact I've made with myself and with the reader - not to invent. And when I can't remember, I say I can't remember. I'm just appalled by the memoirs published by people who regurgitate dialogue, conversations from when they were small children, and they go on for three or four pages. I can't even remember what we said to each other ten minutes ago! How can I remember what was said sixty years ago? It's not possible.

  Paul Auster

  Children, Years, People

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

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism.

  Karen Abbott

  Rose, Musical, Chance

  Source: tech.blorge.com

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can.

  David Leavitt

  Memories, Thinking, Degrees

  3 Copy quote

• Memoir ... satisfies our need for gossip and intimacy, for testimony and confessional, and in this world of spin, offers a truthful account of what it means to succeed or fail, to love and lose, to break your heart and mend it again.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Heart, Mean, Gossip

  0 Copy quote

• Moments fly, memories remain; and then memories fly, only memoirs remain and finally memoirs disappear, nothing remains!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Memories, Moments, Disappear

  0 Copy quote

• I don't feel any ethical dilemma when I write. In my memoir, I was able to write with candor about the two most difficult people in the world to write with candor about - mom and dad. Everything else is downhill from there.

  Said Sayrafiezadeh

  Mom, Dad, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  1 Copy quote

  Show source

• When it was suggested that I write a memoir I said, 'I'm not old enough. I'm not distinguished enough.' But I went home and sat down to write, and the material for the book just came flooding into my hands.

  Julia Cameron

  Book, Home, Writing

  0 Copy quote

• A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.

  Isabel Allende

  Writing, Exercise, Mirrors

  0 Copy quote

• A lot of folks just get it in their head that, for instance, like writing memoirs is just easy. You just write down what happened. It doesn't quite work that way.

  Homer Hickam

  Writing, Way, Easy

  Source: interviewingauthors.com

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not; it's a deliberate construction.

  William Zinsser

  Events, Looks, Calling

  0 Copy quote

• I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

  Danielle Trussoni

  Believe, Character, Should Have

  Source: therumpus.net

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Self, Order, Narrators

  48 Copy quote

• The discipline of writing a memoir comes in the editing. This is where I cut, slash, and burn - where my creative mind is transformed into a ruthless one. No word escapes my scrutiny. It is here where I see what boundaries need to be set.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Writing, Cutting, Editing

  Source: therumpus.net

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Writing, People, Interesting

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 3, 2009.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source