41 Memoirs Quotes for You to Enjoy

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty. Alexandra Fuller

Beautiful Courage Honesty Sometimes Out Memoirs Performance Come Often Essentially Africa Urgent

Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction. Andre Aciman

History People Writing Past Live Trial Log Memoirs Give Write Neutral Never Tale Most Narrative Always Provided Itself Want Fiction Conventions Justify Ask Act Reasons Using Why

We were developing an innovative Personal Information Manager called Chandler but a couple years ago I took off from that to do a project writing down my memoirs essentially, reminiscing about the development of the Macintosh. Andy Hertzfeld

People think that because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. Anthony Powell

People Every Think Circumstance Memoirs Exactly Case Invented Never True Since Because Reverse Happened Cannot Include Novel Wholly Biography

I have always distrusted memoir. I tend to write my memoirs through my fiction. It's easier to get to the truth by not claiming that you are speaking it. Some things can be said in fiction that can never be said in memoir. Armistead Maupin

Truth You Easier Claiming Memoir Memoirs Some Some Things Tend Through Write Never Said Always Get Fiction Speaking Things

The memoir industry is, what's the word? Under regulated. I think it needs to be pruned. If there are too many books right now and the market for readers is shrinking, I think we can get rid of many of the memoirs. Another memoir should be awfully well justified before it gets published. Arthur Phillips

With my own memoirs, they are truthful, and I write everything fully expecting to some day end up televised on Court TV, and I'm fully prepared to be challenged legally on it. Augusten Burroughs

Day Own Everything Televised TV Memoirs Some My Own Write Court End Up Truthful Expecting Legally Fully Prepared Challenged

Why was there so much work-sharing in the 1930s? One reason is that government pushed for it. In his memoirs, President Herbert Hoover estimated that as many as two million workers avoided unemployment as a result of his efforts to promote work-sharing. Barry Eichengreen

I'd worked at the White House for two years, and I'd read a bunch of White House memoirs because everybody who works at the White House, even for five minutes, writes a memoir usually not less than 600 pages long - and never without the word 'power' in the title. Christopher Buckley

Word Long Power White White House Everybody Memoir Memoirs Minutes Writes Never House Read Because Without Years Five Bunch Than Title Worked Pages Less Who Works Even Two

Maybe the 'Million Little Pieces' of the world are so popular because no one ever writes memoirs about PTA chairwomen; what memoirists do, and often get in trouble for, is bring interesting lives to light. Darin Strauss

World Light Trouble Memoirs About Writes No-One Pieces Because Get Often Maybe Interesting Little Popular Ever Lives Million Bring

Memoirs are - memory is - rarely 100 percent accurate. Any autobiography is a construct, ballpark, even unnatural. Private diaries, too, can be unreliable - a detail that matters only if the diary is read. Darin Strauss

Jean Toomer is a phantom of the Harlem Renaissance. Pick up any general study of the literature written by Afro-Americans, and there is the name of Jean Toomer. In biographies and memoirs of Harlem Renaissance figures, his name is invoked as if he had been one of the sights along Lenox Avenue. Darryl Pinckney

People write memoirs - this is my take, anyway - out of a great sense of self-importance. Greil Marcus

Great People Sense Out Memoirs Write Take Great Sense Self-Importance Anyway

I'll never put my memoirs in print. Ian Mckellen

Memoirs Never Put Print In Print

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan. Italo Calvino

Energy Books Rules Memoirs Rate More Write Open Had Without Genuine How How Much Testimonial Been Provide Italy Trying Any Preconceived Short Stories Short Stories Might Modest Notes Plan Us Much Useful Less Novel Wasted Things

Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature. James Frey

Life People Some People My Life Think Memoirs Some Perfect Write Never Journalistic Obviously Always Goal Literature Create Held Should Standard

I toured around the country and met all these Broadway producers who put me in all these Neil Simon plays like 'Brighton Beach Memoirs' and 'Biloxi Blues.' Jon Tenney

Me Country Met Broadway Neil Memoirs Beach Simon Toured Put Like Around Blues Producers Who Brighton Plays

At its best, fiction cultivates fantasy and compassion; at its worst, memoir provokes schadenfreude and prurience. The ugly truth, I fear, is that many people are drawn to sensational memoirs for the same reason they watch 'The Apprentice': they like to witness actual suffering, before-your-very-eyes humiliation. Julia Glass

Truth Best Suffering People Fear Witness Ugly Compassion Humiliation Apprentice Worst Drawn Memoir Memoirs Like Cultivate Same Sensational Fiction Fantasy Reason Many Actual Watch

People can lie in letters, but they tend not to. They certainly lie in memoirs. Lois Lowry

Lie People Memoirs Tend Certainly Letters

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