Memoir Quotes: top 99 famous quotes about Memoir

Memoir Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Memoir quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Even now, I am anxious about the naked thoughts that I have shared. The observations are blisteringly honest and of course they have to be. — John Conrad

My story begins with a question. — Alexandra Bogdanovic

Moms in fiction and memoir get a bad rap. — Kelly Corrigan

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth. — Tayari Jones

Had Volcker never pushed through his radical change in policy, the world would be many bond traders and one memoir the poorer. — Michael Lewis

Expectation is the dirtiest word in a traveler's vocabulary. — John Early

I do like a bit of flyin'. Comedy flying is one of my favourite things. I think it rates up there with a neck brace for funniness. — Jennifer Saunders

Men ought to be a four-letter word! Menn! — Becky Lewellen Povich

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

Success is not due to spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire. — Various Attributed Sources

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature." — Kate Zambreno

Chris didn't need to learn how to conquer fear. He had to embrace it, walk with it and listen to it. — Michelle Tackabery

In those days, there was no money to buy books. — Ernest Hemingway,

Courage is just dreams with shoes on. — Reba Riley

I think each family has a funhouse logic all its own, and in that distortion,in that delusion, all behavior can seem both perfectly normal and crazy. — Darin Strauss

The bassist -- always the bassist. — Rob Sheffield

I can't even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious — Frank O'Hara

There is a cost to loving anything, or anyone. No one tells you that when you are young. — Shuly Xochitl Cawood

Those who live in memories are never really dead. — Kate Morton

I walked home holding Tom's hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him. — Aspen Matis

It's the devil's nectar. It's filthy and unhealthy. -Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, referring to coffee (1995) — Eugene Wells

The memoirs of call girls are much in demand these days - a millennial craze. — Dimitra Ekmektsis

Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt. — Mary Karr

I believe in beauty. I believe in goodness. I believe in the power of turning: the other cheek, time, curve of the earth. — Anna White

Walk your own path and be yourself — Joanne Nussbaum

Nothing about these times makes any sense. Nothing. Putting it to words only makes it sound too simple. — Ralph Webster

I didn't know if I was brave or reckless. — Aspen Matis

Obviously memoir is subjective truth: It is my memory, my perspective, that's the beauty. But I still wanted to be as factual as I could. — Cheryl Strayed

I voted for every woman who has to leave a baby too soon, who has to downgrade her career, or who is made to feel invisible in her role as a mother. — Erin Passons

We aren't afraid of what we can explain. — Aspen Matis

For me, the showbiz memoir is uninteresting - you want to tell people something they don't know about. — Alexei Sayle

Fortunately the Omanis are generally very friendly and in no time at all, I had a knight in shining white dishdasha offering to help me. — Charlotte Smith

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

Pittsburgh did not smell of mayonnaise that day. — Sandra Staas

Memory, memoir, autobiography - lies, lies, all lies. — Rabih Alameddine

I wear the word victim like a badge of honor - my own purple heart. I see what others do more than I see what I'm capable of. — Mary E. DeMuth

Our stories are mirrors. We can look into them and return to ourselves. We can make of them an offering. — Jane Davenport Platko

The memoir-novel dumbed down fiction and traduced — John Irving

I had a very high-grade publisher tell me I was incapable of writing a memoir. — Mitch Albom

To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born. — W. Somerset Maugham

A remarkable memoir that's packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness. — Steve Martin

Just as there can be a hole in these narratives, a memoir can be as much about what's forgotten as what's remembered. — Jane Alison

The more I learned the more I realized how very much one has to know before one is in-the-know at all. — Julia Child

A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are. — Sean Wilsey

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

If you can see it, you can achieve it. God helps those who helps themselves. Power is in the act of humility. — Patricia Amis

Finally the dawn came, the sky fringed with pink, and the sun bright as a coin in a spill of rising red. — Lauren Slater

The point, I decided, wasn't to have the autobiography or even the memories. The point was who I became when I wrote. — Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction. — Aspen Matis

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism. — Kate Zambreno

There was no time to lose, no time to waste in rest or play. The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

The snug log house looked just as it always had. It did not seem to know they were going away. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

It is important to measure ourselves at least once in life, undertake a personal odyssey that constructs a clarifying prism of our being. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I have a severe case of invisibility-plus-impulsive-behavior that I am calling, for the purposes of this memoir, Xamnesia. It — Lizzie Harwood

Everyone has a colorful life. You just have to get out your crayons. — Benay Nordby

Alchemy of the Afterlife A Memoir Linda Kinnamon, RN Flatirons Press — Linda Kinnamon

God has given us all our unique story. It's not one that flows easily or pretty, but the story is ours! Find it and treasure it ... — Deborah L. Parker

I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin — Frank McCourt

I'm not usually drawn to memoir - many run the risk of self-aggrandizement or score-settling. — Alice McDermott

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

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

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

Each year, Gracie Henderson moons a thousand strangers, collects their shocked faces in an annual photo album. — Aspen Matis

I've grown old with this century; there's not much left of either of us. — Penelope Lively

I like how writing can take you off for a jaunt in your head and then set you back down in the chair where you've been all along. — Georgann Low

We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin. — Mary Karr

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

And there's nothing more dangerous than a written memoir. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can't drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs. — Andre Dubus III

There's nothing gay about living life straight — Paul B. Tripp

What if your Vision Board came true? — Juliette Power

An intensely gripping narrative ... expertly crafted and totally addictive ... a must read! — Maggie Reese

Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. — Martha Barron Barrett

If I have been given any gift in this life, it's my ability to live simultaneously in the rational world and the world of imagination. — Tom Robbins

The clown was an evil one. They're either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter. — Chris Thrall

Who have you helped today"? — V.

Everyone has a captivity narrative; today we call it memoir. — Stacy Schiff

It is not a crime to commit First Degree Writing — Temple Emmet Williams

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade. — Augusten Burroughs

I discovered that when one follows the artist's eye one sees unexpected treasures in so many seemingly ordinary scenes. — Julia Child

Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils. — Rick Barnett

A lot of men tend to want "models"
I tell men, unless they look like a model themselves, they can't expect to land one. — Trisha Ventker

I was promising myself strength.

I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it. — Aspen Matis

I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring. — Harlan Coben

Betrayal is sacred when the heart can encompass the whole. — Nancy Wait

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children. — Shirley Jackson

Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it. — Jeannette Walls

I thought those were others. Soon, I was to learn that they were us. — Ralph Webster

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

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

Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism. — Bill Ayers

I was no longer following a trail.

I was learning to follow myself. — Aspen Matis

This book is a personal memoir; but it is also a larger story-about carelessness and guilt, and the wreckage they can make of lives. — Brooke Hayward

Sometimes you don't get a second chance. You need to take a chance when you have the opportunity. Always. — Gavin MacLeod

I'll enjoy today while it's here, using the time wisely. Each day is a gift that soon becomes a memory. — Lina Rehal

Live life carefully but save time for fun. — Cindy Lou Moldovan

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. — Baby Halder

It is an empty room, that afterwards, a soledad, and it sits there at the center of a person's life and waits to be filled. — Daisy Hernandez

Memory is each man's own last measure, and for some, the only achievement. — William Least Heat-Moon