Character Quote by Mary Karr

“I've often been accused of harnessing genre strategies to mainstream ends. I do concede that relationships, characters, and introspection are my primary interest. The…

— Karen Joy Fowler

Memoir is actually the most egoless genre, even though it might seem ostensibly so much ego-driven. In order for it to succeed, you have…

— Nick Flynn

The truth, or success, of any writer's story lies partly in its specificity and its emotional honesty.

— Gail Caldwell

The deepest failures any fiction writer is likely to have are failures of not quite comprehending the truth of the story that he or…

— Richard Russo

“Unlike uplifting light fiction, narrative nonfiction’s trammeled territory provides no safe room where an unnerved writer can banish their unpleasant memories. Narrative nonfiction must…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Fiction that fails to engage an audience with the emotional intricacies of viable characters will, for many in that audience, simply alienate them with…

— Hal Duncan

Memoir is a difficult literary form to pull off when dealing with discrete and poignant moments in a life, even harder when seeking to…

— Uzodinma Iweala

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

— Dean Koontz

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…

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“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

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary…

— Raymond Queneau

At its best, fiction cultivates fantasy and compassion; at its worst, memoir provokes schadenfreude and prurience. The ugly truth, I fear, is that many…

— Julia Glass