Memoir Writing Quotes

“I was so angry with him, but part of me felt exhilarated by his sheer cockiness. Even under the influence of God knows how many rounds of drinks at Dave’s, Wild Bill still had enough charisma to charm away any negative thoughts.

He never taught me to ride a bike, bandaged a skinned knee, or comforted me over bullies teasing me for wearing Salvation Army clothes. But Wild Bill was my dad. And that was enough.
We both erupted into laughter as I wrapped my arms around him, breathing in the distinctive scent belonging only to Dad.”
― Samantha Hart, Blind Pony: As True A Story As I Can Tell

“We were both chilled from the rain and as hungry as wolves. Over a fine meal of oysters, cappeletti alla cortigiana and orecchiette with tomatoes, anchovies and eggplant served with a crisp dry chablis, we discussed our plans, if not for immortality, at least for defying the eroding qualities of time.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“I’m only “in-country” for minutes when the rocket attack that kept the plane from landing resumes with a vengeance.”
― Michael Zboray, Teenagers War: Vietnam 1969

“Truth is the lie you once told returning to haunt you”
― Dermot Healy, The Bend for Home

“A writer’s voice emanates from their interest and compulsions that absorbs them completely. Only by fully committing himself or herself to a pet subject or issue can the writer develop a thematic tone that speaks to other people with authority and serenity. The quality of their literary voice is the crucial part of the writer’s legitimacy, and their authenticity cannot come from mimicking other writers’ style, but must evolve naturally from their inner sanctity and must flow effusively from an inner necessity.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“For the more haunted among us, only looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“the difficulty of accommodating an erratic family member while protecting young children, which is how my mother would have viewed it – on the real possibilty that Mama brought us to our grandparents’ home only if she knew Bill wouldn’t be there. ” (117)”
― Teresa Tumminello Brader, Letting in Air and Light

“The best memoirists stress the subjective nature of reportage. Doubt and wonder come to stand as part of the story.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“In a great memoir, some aspect of the writer’s struggle for self often serves as the book’s organizing principle, and the narrator’s battle to become whole rages over the book’s trajectory.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“The practiced liar also projects her own manipulative, double-dealing facade onto everyone she meets, which makes moving through the world a wary, anxious enterprise. It’s hard enough to see what’s going on without forcing yourself to look through the wool you’ve pulled over your own eyes.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“It’s the disparities in your childhood, your life between ass-whippings, that throws past pain into stark relief for a reader. Without those places of hope, the beatings become too repetitive—maybe they’d make a dramatic read for a while, but single-note tales seldom bear rereading.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“Each chapter allowed me to break my silence, gain confidence & fight for my truth”
― Kimberly Anne Bell, The Epitome of Kimmy: Accept & Embrace It All

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison. (Victor Hugo)

Not being heard is no reason for silence. (Victor Hugo)”
― Gay Ann Kiser and Tessa Gray

“As hard as this story felt to live through, it felt tremendously harder to relive.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“Daniella,” he said to me…”Tell your story.”
Could I?
Exit. Excommunicate. Backslide. Leave.
Could I recover from the life I had lived? From the cults I kept joining? From never having learned to be myself?”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“I don’t think I realized back then that I wanted to rewrite the past, though, perform a do-over. It’s only in hindsight I’ve come to this conclusion.”
― Linda Murphy Marshall, Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery

“Translation involves more than the deciphering of words, words strung together in sentences, in paragraphs, in dialogue, in the years of a life. After all, a machine can do that if you feed all the data into it. Translation also involves making sense of what’s left unspoken, those ellipses, blank spaces, the dot-dot-dots when you have to guess what’s happening in the person’s mind, what the silent messages mean. It calls for the translation of surrounding events, the cultural context, as well as the translation of nonverbal communication. What was being said through that certain look, that ever-so-tiny smile, that flash of a grimace? That spark of anger? Those sarcastic comments? Those prolonged silences? What did it all mean? (249)”
― Linda Murphy Marshall, Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery

“Admittedly, a number of the translations of my life, of what went on in Ivy Lodge, are loose at best, warranting multiple-choice answers, never ideal in the scientifically based world of translation. You're supposed to go from the source language (the language being translated) to the target language (the language being translated into). A translation is only good when the translator knows--or can surmise--the intention of the person being translated, understands with a fair amount of confidence the exact meaning of that source language. Maybe that's one problem with my attempts to translate my family. Maybe my parents remained unclear in their own minds what they wanted to say, what their words and behavior meant, what their underlying motivation was. In that case, it makes translation doubly difficult if the source of the words and events to be translated is lost in a sea of linguistic confusion. Translators need patterns to make sense out of foreign words, or it all becomes a hodgepodge of meaningless sounds and symbols. Chaos (256).”
― Linda Murphy Marshall, Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery

“The phone rang, and I scrambled to answer it, hoping that whoever was on the other end would be my salvation. It was a telemarketer. Here, I thought, was an excellent opportunity to make new friends.”
― Aileen Weintraub, Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir

“What did it mean, he thought I never needed to be on bed rest? Why was he so flippant about it? I wasn’t a statistic. You don’t stop another human being’s life for months and then say you didn’t have to go through that, but no biggie, right?”
― Aileen Weintraub, Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir

“Looking for goshawks is like looking for grace: it comes, but not often, and you don't get to say when or how.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“The clarity that comes without desperation, is
the clarity that carries authority”
― Daniel Ehiagwina, Where Are You?: God's Call and Clarity In The Mist Of Life's Struggles

“Writing a memoir is akin to taking off one's clothes in public, and as I learned years ago in the amateur strip contest as Darren and the go-go boys cheered me on, success at such an endeavor can only happen when you've got a lot of people pulling for you.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“Los recuerdos con trama son, por supuesto, los que cometen el pecado original de la autobiografía, lo que le da la vitalidad, si no la razón de ser.”
― Janet Malcolm, Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory

“La autobiografía es un género de nombre errado; la memoria recita solo algunas de sus líneas.”
― Janet Malcolm, Fotografías fijas: Memoria en imágenes

“If you do this to me, I will write about it.”
― Sue William Silverman, Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul

“I was in the prime of my time as the maiden, the magic of the middle – not yet the mother and far from the crone. My supple, small breasts were not yet deflated from years of nursing sweet babies. My strong, smooth stomach hadn’t expanded in the mysterious, magical way it would, to grow another human. My skin was yet to be speckled in white spots, ravaged by too many summers. As the years passed, my looks would fade, the lines around my eyes would grow deeper, and I would become a different kind of beautiful.”
― Dana Da Silva, The Shift: A Memoir

“Word choice does matter when you convey your message to a particular reader. The average reader will most likely read your written text if it is clear, meaningful and establishes a purpose.”
― Saaif Alam

“Per questo, si scrive. Si sono moltiplicate le memorie di chi vuole raccontare la vecchiaia propria o dei propri familiari, la morte di una persona cara, o quella a cui egli stesso è prossimo. Si scrive perché si pensa. Si pensa perché si vive.”
― Gabriella Caramore, L'età grande. Riflessioni sulla vecchiaia

“RECORDING THE PAST WITH A DULL PENCIL IS POINTLESS”
― Lynn Byk, The Fearless Moral Inventory of Elsie Finch