Memoir Quotes

The small word, “No.” I’d see its deity.

Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw—the shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.

Childhood is a wilderness.

I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.

She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statement—a rebellion. I didn’t try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive.

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing.

After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing.

Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they’ve never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn’t a child anymore.

I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.

Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.

The only thing to do with tears is water your flowers with them, so that there is something to show the world when the sun comes out.

I came from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation.

It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.

I felt ridiculously self-conscious, like the stick of celery at a luxurious buffet.

Breathe in the small things

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!

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.

Running away is vastly underrated.

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.

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.

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

Shut your mouth - there's a bus coming.

I define success as being the best, authentic me that I can be.

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

Love is bigger than everything.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

This body needs me to say yes to it, just as it is right now. No more singing that same old jingle of body-shame and dieter's promised lands.