Memoir Quotes

It is winter, and very cold. There are icicles against the glass, and frost. I am tracing a pattern, before it melts. Before it fades, and is lost for good, like memories

I want to sling a stone, a small rock into a pool, see it ripple. I want to shake a tree, create a small storm..

The landscape is bathed in the honeyed light of morning. Sometimes the memory of winter comes again. And my days are colored reveries of you, my nights sensuous

I was an unwilling passenger leaving the Big Country. I would miss the mountains and the waterfalls, the treks on broad horses' backs to hidden villages in secret valleys.

Writing is...creating tattoos which are invisible, under your skin

Our eyes met. I kissed her soft face, and down the stairs they descended. Their voices blended into an echo, a murmur. I ventured barefoot into the bedroom. The dark gown lay crumpled upon the bed

There were women who navigated in canoes, holding their children, the beguiling wind blowing soft sleet kisses, raining upon their skins

I wonder who else in the world was having such an exquisite dawn.

She hands me an ornament of The Virgin Mary. "Pray to the Holy Mary, Mother of God!" I notice she has a gold chain round her neck. It has the holy cross and a shamrock

I was climbing high, high up Pen Dinas Head among the sparkling yellow gorse, sea birds and white heather, with the oily sheep huddled together against the wind

The head can travel a far piece while the body sits in one spot. It can traverse many decades, and many conversations can be had, even with the dead.

You don't need everyone to like you, just the right one(s)!

Tomorrow! How sweet its prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible.

But it's a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go.

It's hard to be an articulate ghost.

Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation.

I have tried to fight the impulse, the attraction, but my defenses crumble every time I see him. Since my divorce from Hank I'm practically love-starved.

Men ought to be a four-letter word! Menn!

Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?""Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering.

The bassist -- always the bassist.

We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts

You cannot go poking skeletons in the closet without making maggots wriggle." - Springfield Road

You know Becky, you haven't been the same since that crowbar fell on your head." - - said to me by my mother after I eloped with a guy I'd known for about 30 days, when I was 18 years old!

We aren’t afraid of what we can explain.

If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.

But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was.

My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.

My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn’t looked toward it. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known the way. If I’d only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.

death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End.

Pittsburgh did not smell of mayonnaise that day.

I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.

Chinese proverb says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This journey had begun with the coercion of my body, with my own wild hope.

Humor writers:1) Write2) Laugh3) Laugh when they write4) Write when they laugh

I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves.

I began to lust after our conjoining life.

Ask not what your Joe Montaperto can do for you, but rather what YOU can do for your Joe Montaperto.

Happy people have everything to give.

But that's hindsight for you: never there when you need it.

Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born.

I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.

I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love.

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

The PCT would lead me to an otherworld, through the sadness I felt here, out of it.

I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.

I needed only to allow myself to know what I already knew.

In lovesickness we had found a common language.

I wanted to come close to fierce wild things. They seemed prehistoric, rare and sacred.

She taught me only how to need to be taken care of. I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions — to earn my own trust.

These tools were my parents’ way of saying: What you’re doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way.