Memoir Quotes - Page 7

• I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre.

  Harry Shearer

  Merry Christmas, Night, White

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

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• The mathematicians have been very much absorbed with finding the general solution of algebraic equations, and several of them have tried to prove the impossibility of it. However, if I am not mistaken, they have not as yet succeeded. I therefore dare hope that the mathematicians will receive this memoir with good will, for its purpose is to fill this gap in the theory of algebraic equations.

  Niels Henrik Abel

  Purpose, Gaps, Theory

  "A Source Book in Mathematics". Book edited by David Eugene Smith, "A Memoir on Algebraic Equations, Proving the Impossibility of a Solution of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree" (1824), 1929.

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• I could never write my memoirs, just because too many people are still alive and would be hurt.

  Bruce Willis

  Hurt, Writing, People

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• Insomniac is an impassioned work-an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis, and the kind of obsessive brooding we associate with the insomniac state. Much here is fascinating, and much is upsetting; here is a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Army, Hands, Upset

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• If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.

  Salman Rushdie

  Writing, Trying, Honest

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Wildlife was the only thing we've written together with Paul Dano. It's based on a book by this author Richard Ford, who just published a memoir about his family that's really wonderful. Paul fell in love with his book, and we optioned it ourselves, and he took a first pass at writing it. He asked me for notes, and then our note session devolved into an argument really quickly.

  Zoe Kazan

  Book, Writing, Together

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• I thought a lot about how so many memoirs about fatness focus on weight loss; they don't focus on living with weight in a world that is rather inhospitable to it. So I knew that was the idea that was going to be most interesting and most challenging, and I like to be challenged as a writer.

  Roxane Gay

  Loss, Interesting, Focus

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm writing a memoir. I'm four pages in. I start with my first memory, which is kicking my uncle in the balls. I was four.

  Michael Showalter

  Memories, Writing

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, tv.avclub.com. January 28, 2008.

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• It's weird being an author because it's different than writing songs. You put so much more of yourself out there to be judged because it's a memoir. So when the reviews come in, they all feel really personal. Some people are just going to hate you no matter what. Personally, I never believe good reviews. When people tell me they love the book, I just shrug and say, "Yeah, whatever." My shrink says it's all about the love within. You have to love yourself or you'll never be able to accept compliments from anyone.

  Dean Wareham

  Song, Hate, Believe

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Germany was a parliamentary democracy with many, many humane and decent people who kept writing in their journals - I've read these journals, these memoirs - "Surely our leaders will stop this nonsense. Surely someone will take on these thugs. Surely the pendulum will swing back." Everyone was sitting at home going, "Well, they haven't come for me. This is crazy, but surely someone's going to take care of it." We all have to take care of it.

  Naomi Wolf

  Crazy, Home, Writing

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• My first book was about grappling with my identity and transitioning medically and socially as a young person. At that point, it hadn't been told yet. There wasn't a trans memoir that was written from the perspective of a young person that transitioned.

  Janet Mock

  Book, Perspective, Identity

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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• Book Everything is Flammable is an odd format though, not quite a diary and not quite a memoir. I was working on it as it was happening. This was gratifying to me.

  Gabrielle Bell

  Book, Odd

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If you're writing a book where you want to make a positive truth claim, then you should absolutely call it nonfiction or memoir. If you don't want to make that claim - if that's not what's important to you; if you're more interested in storytelling and interiority and interpersonal relationships than in objective, checkable facts about the world - then why wouldn't you call it a novel, and take advantage of what that gets you, of the extra freedom, of belonging to the tradition of the novel?

  Elif Batuman

  Book, Writing, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• 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

  Sex, Writing, Men

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• Maybe that's the foundation of my book: how do we come to terms with the death of someone we love when it is impossible to come to terms with such a profound loss? The path I found where I could even ask that question, or maybe advance it beyond what I'd attempted in A Year and a Day, was by straddling the line: this is fiction and memoir, it is true and it isn't.

  Leslie Pietrzyk

  Book, Loss, Profound

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I've been thinking a lot about why it was so important to me to do The Idiot as a novel, and not a memoir. One reason is the great love of novels that I keep droning on about. I've always loved reading novels. I've wanted to write novels since I was little. I started my first novel when I was seven.I don't have the same connection to memoir or nonfiction or essays. Writing nonfiction makes me feel a little bit as if I'm producing a product I don't consume - it's a really alienating feeling.

  Elif Batuman

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I can be incredibly angry with someone, I can be incredibly critical, but... I went through a period where I was reading a lot of memoirs of guards in holocausts and serial killers. I like to understand why people do bad things.

  Ira Sachs

  Reading, People, Holocaust

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I was always worried about the dishonesty and meretriciousness that often accompanies ego. So I tried to make the memoir as factual and accurate and as unemotional as I could, and let readers make their own judgments on what happened. And, in fact, that's how I write poetry. I'm trying to present the reader with the experience itself, not with my commentary on it. So I adopted a style that I'd hoped would let me accomplish that.

  Dan Burt

  Writing, Ego, Style

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I love to read long books. I enjoy experiencing that extension. But it's not something I feel comfortable with and not something I think I can gain comfort with by practice. It was a real struggle for me while writing memoir to get past three pages or so. In poems, I can write long poems. But length in prose: no.

  Shane McCrae

  Real, Book, Struggle

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I can be very snobby about fiction, especially contemporary fiction. I can be kind of overly demanding, I think. But this is, I think, a good time. A lot of fiction comes out right now. So, I like reading the memoir. I love memoir, the biography, auto bio.

  Annette Bening

  Reading, Thinking, Be Kind

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• I don't like talking about myself; I like to let the music be the spokesperson for me. So doing a memoir and all that chronological 'and then this happened and then blah blah' doesn't appeal to me that much. I think there's more mystique in what you don't know about.

  Russell Mael

  Thinking, Music Is

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Grading creative writing is always an ethical dilemma. But what you brought up about grading personal stories versus the research paper is of course a truly volatile issue in teaching memoir or the personal essay, because there's no pretense that the narrator is a character.

  Debra Monroe

  Teaching, Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Memoirs are going to be problematic sells for a while, though, because even if memoir means "based in memory," right now, in the collective mind, memoir means "recovery." When my agent and I started looking at small presses the possibility for my book, I realized most small presses were not publishing memoir, because they don't want to be associated with the genre that Mary Karr calls, half-facetiously, "literature's trashy cousin."

  Debra Monroe

  Cousin, Memories, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Yet one new trend I do like coming from mainstream publishers right now is memoirs tied to research that explores the narrator's dilemma.

  Debra Monroe

  Dilemma

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Lately I've been thinking about the idea that all novels are, at least in some way, about the process of writing a novel - that the construction of the book and the lineage of people constructing novels are always part of the story the author is telling. I think the equivalent for memoir should be that all memoirs are, in some way, about the process of memory. Memoirs are made out of a confusing, flawed act of creation.

  Lucas Mann

  Memories, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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