How To Write A Memoir Quotes

#1. Asking me how to write a memoir is a little like saying, "I really want to have sex, where do I start?" What one person fantasizes about would ruin the romance for another.

Mary Karr

#2. I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.'

Tim O'Brien

#3. What I wanted was to write a memoir that was immersive rather than reflective, to resurrect a long-gone version of my own consciousness. I kept expecting that sooner or later the effort would come to seem like second nature to me, but it never did.

Kevin Brockmeier

#4. I live my memoirs, I don't have to write them down.

Karl Lagerfeld

#5. There is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.

Augusten Burroughs

#6. Only, I felt, by some such attempt to write history in terms of personal life could I rescue something that might be of value, some element of truth and hope and usefulness, from the smashing up of my own youth by the war.

Vera Brittain

#7. Anyone who tries to write a memoir needs to keep in mind that what's interesting to you isn't necessarily interesting to a reader.

Mitch Albom

#8. The act of writing means you wish to communicate. Whether you're writing a memoir for yourself you put in a drawer, or you write a poem and you send it to a little magazine, or you write for publication, it always means - the form follows function.

Harlan Ellison

#9. I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).

Gore Vidal

#10. If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.

Baby Halder

#11. Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.

Carrie Fisher

#12. I'm not sure I ever would write a memoir.

Susan Ford

#13. When it was suggested that I write a memoir I said, 'I'm not old enough. I'm not distinguished enough.' But I went home and sat down to write, and the material for the book just came flooding into my hands.

Julia Cameron

#14. I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

Augusten Burroughs

#15. Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

Stephen King

#16. I actually find it pretty tedious when magazines ask me to write articles based on my real life, because I've already lived it and there's nothing new to discover. So, I'm unlikely to write a memoir.

Nick Earls

#17. Popeye the Sailor Man has more cultural longevity. Only women and poofs read or write now. Otherwise, these days, no sooner has someone been sodomised by a close relative than they think they can write a memoir. The game's up.

Hanif Kureishi

#18. I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.

Jamie Lee Curtis

#19. Writing a memoir isn't particularly interesting to me. I'm not like Ellen [DeGeneres], where I can write, 'Water bottles
they're crazy!' and it's funny.

Lauren Graham

#20. Humor writers:
1) Write
2) Laugh
3) Laugh when they write
4) Write when they laugh

Ann K. Howley

#21. I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.

Harlan Coben

#22. When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I don't write any kind at all: I'm trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.

Leslie Jamison

#23. When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.

Conor Oberst

#24. 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

#25. Unless you bring a beating heart into your message, it is dead' (Author unknown)

That's why I wrote my how-to book, "Don't Write your MEmoir without ME". If there's no "this is me" in your memoir, it won't resonate with your readers the way you hope it will.

Viga Boland

#26. I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.

Rachel Cusk

#27. I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.

Jim Harrison

#28. 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 the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.

Isabel Allende

#29. It was actually fun to write [memoir], because I went back to interview people my parents had taught or who had worked with them, and I learned a lot about them that I hadn't known.

Condoleezza Rice

#30. 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

#31. Everything I write is a rebound.

Stuart Stutzman

#32. I don't feel any ethical dilemma when I write. In my memoir, I was able to write with candor about the two most difficult people in the world to write with candor about - mom and dad. Everything else is downhill from there.

Said Sayrafiezadeh

#33. When you write your memoir you will understand, perhaps for the first time, the significance of your life through the language, images and emotions you craft from the memory.

Maureen Murdock

#34. Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

David Herbert Donald