Top 34 Best Memoirs Quotes
#1. In the worst memoirs, you can feel the author justifying himself - forgiving himself - in every paragraph. In the best memoirs, the author is tougher on him- or herself than his or her readers will ever be.
Darin Strauss
#2. Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart.
Ravi Zacharias
#4. Most of the time our inner voice tries to guide us to 'Truth' but we, out of our own vested interests, wish to continue living in our own self-created illusions because it suits our purpose or fulfils our needs.
Kapil Kumar Bhaskar
#5. When I was younger, I read all the great food memoirs, by M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin and Julia Child and Nicolas Freeling and Ruth Reichl, and felt flooded with a sense of comfort and safety.
Kate Christensen
#6. They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms (Casanova, p.34, Vol 1 Preface).
Giacomo Casanova
#7. I could make the title of my memoirs: 'It's got cinematic disaster written all over it.'
Peter Capaldi
#8. It's easy to write one's memoirs when one has a terrible memory.
Arthur Schnitzler
#9. I quickly became aware that the phrase "it can only get better" could very quickly turn into "it could always be worse," because it was.
Savannah Grace
#10. I could never write my memoirs, just because too many people are still alive and would be hurt.
Bruce Willis
#11. Having to admit that you are depressed makes one feel less than. Broken. Yes, that's what it is. Broken.
Gillian Marchenko
#12. When dad says he's going to church, he actually means he's going to a library or a bookstore. - Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac.
Gabrielle Zevin
#13. Thomas Mann used to write education novels and now you can write an education memoir, and there are all these memoirs coming out now about people's relationships with books. Like anything else, these can be good or bad. The genre doesn't make it good or bad, it's the execution.
Marco Roth
#15. But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.
Arthur Golden
#16. They were twenty-seven already, in no time at all they'd be thirty, terrifying. No one knew what would happen then. Michelle couldn't imagine anything more than writing zine-ish memoirs and working in bookstores.
Michelle Tea
#17. Of all the many memoirs by former Soviet officials, Palazchenko's is among the best written and also the most objective. Even his descriptions of U.S. policy are more accurate and judicious than those of some American scholars.
Jack F. Matlock Jr.
#18. Memoirs of An Unfortunate Young Nobleman, Returned from a Thirteen Years' Slavery in America, Where He was Sent by the Wicked Contrivances of His Cruel Uncle, etc. Part II Concludes with a Summary View of the Trial. 2 volumes. London: 1743.
Anonymous
#19. I don't see why I should be washed as well as hanged," quoth Kit.
from "The Memoirs of Jack Chelwood
Constance Savery
#20. I love memoirs and autobiographies in general.
Brett Davern
#21. That night we slept apart, all those unexplored continents reemerged on the atlas of your bed.
Rosalyn D'Mello
#22. I knew that I had to write my memoirs.
Jane Fonda
#23. But listening to him [Barack Obama] speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state Senate.
Sarah Palin
#24. He moved with the sound of pockets full of change and I knew my life would never be the same."- Anastasia from Master of the Universe Memoirs Book One
Anastasia Lily
#25. Desolina and Tony had attended one-room schoolhouses until the third grade. ... According to Tony, there were hardly enough pencils and sober teachers to go around. [Author's grandparents educational background.]
James Vescovi
#26. What draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.
Lisa Cron
#27. What most people see is a badge, behind and beyond the badge is what they need to know...the person.
Donna Brown
#28. None of my friends had grandparents like these. ... Tony and Desolina were exotic.
James Vescovi
#29. Lastly, 'Hang tough!' Never, ever give up regardless of the adversity. If you are a leader, a fellow who other fellows look to, you have to keep going.
Dick Winters
#30. On resigning as collaborator on the memoirs of the former Wallis Warfield Simpson, new summaries, 6 October 1955. You can't make the Duchess of Windsor into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Cleveland Amory
#31. The American war-writing tradition is a proud one and booming in this era of the Global War on Terror - at least in the nonfiction realm. Hundreds of memoirs and press accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan have been published since 9/11.
Matt Gallagher
#32. I rent a Jacobean-fronted hunting lodge in Hampshire from the National Trust and like to go there as much as possible. I've grown to love it so much, especially when writing my memoirs there at weekends.
Nicholas Haslam
#34. I love memoirs. They are probably my favorite literary form, along with biographies. The more confessional, the better. There is so, so, so little truth in the popular culture, and I am starved and grateful for any I can find.
Anne Lamott
