Memoir Quotes

Mary [Tyler Moore] was absolutely brilliant... She is a fabulous actress. She can do anything.

How many pages will it take to tell your story?

Sherry Carroll is a real life Penny Lane and one wonders if she hasn't got Cameron Crowe or Lester Bangs hidden somewhere in her suburban basement.

A vow is a heavenly created obligation in motion that only ends when fully completed.

While some people are good at painting, playing an instrument or singing, I have been told more than once I am good at storytelling. I hope that you enjoy my stories as I recall them.

Success is not due to spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.

autism is more like retina patterns than measles

There's this parallel, perhaps less conscious desire, which is to numb myself to the world. To deal with the world tomorrow. Living is difficult. Dying is difficult.

I know of other mothers who have children with disabilities, and right away they loved them and decided to fight for them.That isn’t my story.

Live life carefully but save time for fun.

To me, the words “food” and “guilt” didn’t belong in the same sentence unless, say, you were referring to how you felt about the starving children in Africa.

The next day I received a phone call from Mr. Pride which began, “So, I heard you won Ho of the Year.” Well when you put it like that it didn’t sound like such an accomplishment.

The entire partying lifestyle was superficial in my experience, and most of my friendships were as deep as a shot glass and as short-lived as a pack of cigarettes.

Lesson learned: If you’re already resorting to writing shitty poetry (not the lovey-dovey kind) to get your guys attention within one month of meeting him, he is not the one.

That's the thing about parents, I'm beginning to realize. You don't have to see them all that much to imitate them.

My story begins with a question.

Free love, man, Free Love! Which, by the way, was the single greatest concept a young man has ever heard. About three years late, women got wise an my frustration returned to normal levels.

I learned that being a mother takes a lot of energy.

Become your own soulmate. Then you'll always have someone watching your back, and you'll always have someone who loves you.

I am in the unthinkable situation that people cannot bear to contemplate.

Their promise, my children's possibilities, still linger in our home.

There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole.

Your past doesn't dictate what your future will be.

After college I got a job and started working. This new career had absolutely nothing to do with my degree.

Everything around me affirmed there was nothing else I could do – yet everything inside me cried that I was not doing enough.

Work hard. "Suit yourself, then you'll know at least one person is pleased.

The stars were withdrawn, small, giving no light, unlike other nights when they seemed to hang large from the sky ready to be reached for and taken into our hands.

How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge of the memoirist.

Chris didn’t need to learn how to conquer fear. He had to embrace it, walk with it and listen to it.

A lifelong movie I already knew the ending to

You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life.

If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.

The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, "Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal-Mart.

I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin

This memoir is one of the most brutally honest books I’ve ever read. You will grow to believe, and cheer on, this flawed hero as he gains a liberating knowledge of himself.

But you have to remember...that you can't run from unhappiness. You just take it with you.

We must define a story which encourages us to make use of the place where we live without killing it, and we must understand that the living world cannot be replicated.

The marriage is over

In those days food was never just sustenance

Life in Britain had seemed like one long antechamber to a room that had too many barriers to entry

A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel.

I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel.