Memoir Quotes

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.

What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century

Bush's memoir is 512 pages. To be fair, 200 of those pages are just games and puzzles.

Former president George W. Bush released his new memoir. By the way, 'memoir' is just a fancy word for 'a bunch of stuff that happened to me.

Hillary Clinton's 506-page memoir has come out. So much of her personality shines through, that in the end, you, too, will want to sleep with an intern.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

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.

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

Final installment of Things More Fun Than Reading the Sarah Palin Memoir: Driving into a tree, microwaving your head, and getting stabbed in the eye with a carrot.

I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary.

The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.

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

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

Nobody's life is interesting enough to warrant a third memoir.

I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.

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

My memoirs are full of humor, I had to change jokes because it was a little too dark.

You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.

She said, 'No, you learned that you have power - power and determination. I love you and I am proud of you. With those two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere.

Pen and paper have been my life, now they may herald my death. But I asked for these, the traditional tools of my trade, and to my surprise my request has been granted.

We tried to change Vietnam. Instead, Vietnam changed us.

Remember how we put stickers with your name on your pocessions that could be stolen.We didn't put a sticker on your innocence so don't lose it!

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

This is the trouble with real-life story arcs: the happiness is so rarely saved for the end.

Memory was my drug of choice. -Pea Hicks

Make time your friend and not your enemy

View other authors as your allies rather than your competition

You are not yourself in autobiography. It is never going to be you, it is only words on a page. Memories are unreliable, so adding the magic of imagination will make your story come alive.

Instead of an unhinged lunatic you may glimpse a punctured soul-a mere human being like you.

You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn't know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the word for mom.

Not everyone is capable of sacrificing his own life. So it is, always has been and always will be.

It is not a crime to commit First Degree Writing

These two Joes—the nasty bully and the starry-eyed dreamer—were my father. Growing up, the difficulty was knowing just which Joe would rise with the sun that day.

I'm ready for the day when Mom loves me too much to keep me, and for every other person who will someday see that I'm not worth holding on to.

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books.

I try to be perfect but I'm not. I'm perfectly imperfect in every way.

Bonding through caregiving..I don't think I'd ever realized until then that so much affection, so much heart connect, happens when we take care of someone.

I always felt awkward and unfinished, unworthy of love, suspicious of affection offered. My mother's absence became a great presence in my life.

[V]alue your dreams but . . . be wary of them also, . . . look for integrity in unusual places.

You kids were all planned, you were just planned really, really quickly.

Do your parents know you’re here?' asked the lady at social Services. ‘No, ’ I said, ‘but I want to know about children’s homes.’ I had to stand on my toes to see over the reception desk.

I considered not getting up, but recognized the pain of staying down was worse than the pain of attempting to stand.

Sometimes to move forward, you have to find yourself backwards.

Love is bigger than everything.

But instability like mine needs considerable distance to pass for mere quirkiness.

Running away is vastly underrated.

The nearest one came to a tumble dryer was if the laundry basket was dropped on the way to the washing-line and then the whole lot went tumbling down the drive.

Indie authors write, design, sell. Like magic, skip one and you make must read vanish.

Recollection, I have found, is usually about half invention...