Memoir Quotes - Page 9

• [John Carlos] has spent much of his life since that time as a dedicated human rights advocate and public speaker, and he is out now with a wonderful new text; a memoir, in fact.

  Tavis Smiley

  Rights, Facts, Wonderful

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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

  Writing, Ideas, Cracks

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• Memoir is trustworthy and its truth assured when it seeks the relation of self to time, the piecing of the shards of personal experience into the starscape of history's night. The materials of memoir are humble, fugitive, a cottage knitting industry seeking narrative truth across the crevasse of time as autobiography folds itself into the vast, fluid essay that is history. A single voice singing its aria in a corner of the crowded world.

  Patricia Hampl

  Humble, Night, Knitting

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• The journey toward authenticity, toward becoming whole is made palpable in Maureen Seaton's Sex Talks to Girls: A Memoir. It shines its considerable light on the passage from religion toward faith, from self-medication to sobriety, from daughterhood to motherhood, from being the disembodied 'good girl' to embracing her own bad lesbian self. In crisp chapters, Seaton leads us, step-by-step, over this harrowing and blissful road, so distinct from yet so much like our own.

  Terry Wolverton

  Girl, Sex, Motherhood

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• Clyde Phillip Wachsberger's delightful memoir about tending beds of flowers as compensation for a lonely middle age only to find unexpected romance along the way is a sweet reminder that, as he puts it, 'anything can happen in a garden.' In prose that balances candor with perfect courtesy, he charms us with the message that keeping a garden with a beloved companion, this most ephemeral of all the arts, can bring us the most enduring joys and pleasures.

  Philip Gambone

  Lonely, Sweet, Art

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• 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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• 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 would never do a printed memoir. I've been asked to publish a memoir from years by different publishers and literary agents. I think it wouldn't be great for me because all I'd really want to talk about it music and I'd rather just play it.

  Natalie Merchant

  Thinking, Years, Play

  "Paradise Is Here: An Interview With Natalie Merchant". Interview with Gregg Shapiro, livingoutli.org. April 19, 2016.

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• And in the same way, FDR's not much of a father. Although the children in all their memoirs really talk about what a fun-loving guy Dad was, and how brooding and unhappy Mom was. The children sort of blame it all on the mother. Well, this is kind of standard and typical, and aggrieved Eleanor Roosevelt that she was not a happier mother. She wanted to be a happier mother. And I must say, she was a happier grandmother.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Mom, Mother, Children

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.

  Anna Quindlen

  Fun, Book, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• It's not as if I knew answers which I am going to set down in the form of a novel or a memoir or a sermon. It's, rather, I'm going to search myself for what I might have to say in this area.

  Frederick Buechner

  Answers, Might, Form

  Interview with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. April 5, 2006.

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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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• 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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• 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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• The memoir was a very personal book. I wrote it as a personal journey and search about who my father was and how my family had come together and come apart - sorting all that out, you know, issues of personal identity.

  Barack Obama

  Father, Book, Journey

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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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