Best Memoir Wisdom

198 Memoir quotes by 165 unique authors

If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will… — Anne Lamott
Whatever shall we do in that remote spot? Well, we will write our memoirs. Work is the scythe of time. — Napoleon Bonaparte
Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs. — David Ben-Gurion
My memoir is about my time in film and the decision to leave Hollywood, grow up, and stop pretending. — Lisa Jakub
I have always felt a special affinity with V. S. Pritchett. He worked from the ear, primarily, as I do, and he was an all-rounder,… — Kevin Barry
A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and… — Isabel Allende
Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth. — Steve Bisley
Moms in fiction and memoir get a bad rap. — Kelly Corrigan
I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir. — Akhil Sharma
A fine memoir is to a fine novel as a well-wrought blanket is to a fancifully embroidered patchwork quilt. The memoir, a logical creation, dissects… — Julia Glass
I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary. — Deborah Copaken Kogan
One of the odder byways of nonfiction is the dishy memoir by those who have served the great or the near-great. — Robert Gottlieb
In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre. — Edmund White
A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel. — Richard Flanagan
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was. — Jim Harrison
I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible,… — Lisa Scottoline
I always wanted to be a writer, and I did want to be a novelist. In college I took a couple of classes that taught… — Anne Fadiman
Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction… — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out… — Alison Bechdel
Enjoy the tiny unexplainable second. You can learn whatever you want. — Jerril Thomas Abraham
It is in the elements that we found ourselves; even though the elements are not the, same Now. — Jerril Thomas Abraham
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… — Armistead Maupin
I read The Bell Jar, and then I read her memoir and her diaries, and a third book, an outside opinion. Just the way she… — Paul Westerberg

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165 authors contributed a total of 198 Memoir Quotes, led by these top contributors:

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