Memoir Quotes - Page 12

• Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Book, Gray Area, Novel

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• I never felt inspired to write this book [ I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse?], like I did with the cat or dog book; I felt compelled. At the time (May 1999), I was planning to write and illustrate an altogether different memoir, a book about my decision whether or not to have a baby.

  Suzy Becker

  Dog, Baby, Book

  Source: bookpage.com

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• A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

  Emma Donoghue

  Different, Situation, Novel

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• A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.

  Mitch Albom

  Uplifting, Should Have, People

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• Devotion, as it relates to the title of my memoir, means fidelity - as in fidelity to a person or a practice. I think it's certainly possible to feel devotion without having faith, at least in the religious sense of the word.

  Dani Shapiro

  Religious, Mean, Thinking

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• I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.

  Calvin Trillin

  Book, Thinking, Three

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• 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

  Atheist, Eye, True Life

  Mary McCarthy (2002). “A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays”, New York Review of Books

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• Stalin didn't write any memoirs. He was too secretive. He was afraid people might read them.

  Jonathan Lynn

  Funny, Humorous, Writing

  Jonathan Lynn, Antony Jay (1988). “The complete Yes, Minister: the diaries of a cabinet minister”, HarperCollins

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• I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• I think Henry Miller has had huge influence not because he wrote about sex, but because the memoir or the nonfiction novel has become such a monumental force in American publishing, if not in literature.

  Leslie Fiedler

  Sex, Thinking, Literature

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• The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald - and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.

  Harlan Ellison

  Horse, Pain, Real

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• Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Want, Being True, Reader

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• I live my memoirs, I don’t have to write them down.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Writing

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• Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

  David Herbert Donald

  Writing, Stories, Mystery

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• The Stovepipe is a memoir full of laughter and tears and a moving story of sisterly love as well as their will to survive.

  Dave Pelzer

  Laughter, Moving, Will To Survive

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• I love memoirs. They are probably my favorite literary form, along with biographies. The more confessional, the better. There is so, so, so little truth in the popular culture, and I am starved and grateful for any I can find.

  Anne Lamott

  Grateful, Culture, Littles

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• Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Kind, Confession

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.203, Modern Library

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• I cut a lot of cringy sex stuff and a lot of stuff I thought was too personal. I think secret gardens are very special. I think we all have to have them. I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

  Damian Barr

  Sex, Cutting, Garden

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Kaethe Schwehn's poignant memoir explores longing, both spiritual and physical, community and faith, in prose that is calm, lovely, and filled with clear-eyed honesty and grace. Tailings is simply an exquisite book.

  Dinty W. Moore

  Spiritual, Honesty, Book

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• When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

  Dave Eggers

  Voice, Stories, Sometimes

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• I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.

  Peter Carey

  Writing, Selfishness, Here And There

  "An Interview With Author Peter Carey". Interview with Ben Evans, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2010.

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• I love memoirs and autobiographies in general.

  Brett Davern

  Autobiography

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• Striding tall through Lauren St John's gorgeously written memoir is her father, and chapter after chapter their relationship is untangled and celebrated. Joy and a hunger for life infuse this book -- whether St John is writing about the harrowing years of Rhodesia's civil war, her childhood adventures in the bush, or the breaking apart of her family. Rainbow's End is a most generous and wise book.

  Lisa Fugard

  Wise, Father, War

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• People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.

  Mark Leyner

  Believe, Writing, Thinking

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• Right now in American writing there is no genre as exciting as memoir - the writer can do anything, as long as it works. It's like the 1920s up in this joint. So, I'd say, experiment with how you tell the story. In the best memoir it's not the what, it's how the writer tells the what - meaning and effect through form.

  Anthony Swofford

  Writing, Long, Joints

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