Memoir Quotes - page 2

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)
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth. View quote
William Zinsser
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The real mistake of women was to let the memoir, the collective, the history, space of producing history - to let it in the hands of men. View quote
Fatema Mernissi
I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring. View quote
Harlan Coben
There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction. View quote
Junot Diaz
Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then they just run around getting crazy. The problem with writing a memoir, obviously, is you can't do that because you sort of know what's going to happen. Because you're the character. View quote
Gary Shteyngart
In terms of style, I think the memoirist should have a novelist's skill and all the elements of a novelist's toolbox. When I read a memoir, I want to really, deeply experience what the author experienced. I want to see the characters and hear the way they speak and understand how they think. And so in that way, writing a memoir feels similar to writing a novel. View quote
Danielle Trussoni
I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor. View quote
Danielle Trussoni
If you bill something as a memoir, you're implying that everything in it is true. View quote
David Benioff
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)
One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice. View quote
Jeannette Walls
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was. View quote
Jim Harrison
A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places. View quote
Emma Donoghue
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, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way. View quote
Lisa Scottoline
I suppose I reached the limit of what I could do with nonfiction books, perhaps because they never felt quite intense enough - it's a journalistic enterprise, ultimately, even if you are using the memoir as a form. View quote
Lawrence Osborne
What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has the emotional resonance of memoir. View quote
Chris Bohjalian
My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy. View quote
Judy Collins
Measure-relations can only be studied in abstract notions of quantity, and their dependence on one another can only be represented by formulæ. On certain assumptions, however, they are decomposable into relations which, taken separately, are capable of geometric representation; and thus it becomes possible to express geometrically the calculated results. In this way, to come to solid ground, we cannot, it is true, avoid abstract considerations in our formulæ, but at least the results of calculation may subsequently be presented in a geometric form. The foundations of these two parts of the question are established in the celebrated memoir of Gauss, Disqusitiones generales circa superficies curvas. View quote
Bernhard Riemann
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 me I would never be a novelist. I discovered I had no imagination. My short stories were always thinly veiled memoir. View quote
Anne Fadiman
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)
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. View quote
Arthur Phillips
Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story. View quote
David Herbert Donald
In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can. View quote
David Leavitt
I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary. View quote
Deborah Copaken