70 Quotes About Memoir

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

How paltry are the traces left behind by a life, even one concentrated around those supposed things of permanence called words. We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one one-thousandth of what we were lasts. We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up on shore. John Darnton

Storytelling is ultimately the only way that we know besides song, dance, painting, and music to share with our tribesmen what it means to be human, express the indefinable feelings that unite humankind. Kilroy J. Oldster

I know what I want to hear. I want to hear the "Believe it or Not" song. I want to play that shit loud. Really belt out the "Should have been somebody eeeeeelse" part, with a little bit of Zack de la Rocha venom. That would be pretty awesome right about now. But the other part of me, the part that wanted to be cool, knew that it was a much better idea to say, "Let's play the fucking Misfits." Because that's what you say to the cool guy in the combat boots who wants to smoke in your house. Because he's going to snarl-smile at you and say, "Fuck yeah! " And you're feel cool by association." Let's play the fucking Misfits, " I said. John snarl-smiled and saluted me with rock horns. "Fuck yeah." Told you. Eric Spitznagel

Sister, why do you do that?"" Do what?"" Cage the animals at night?"" Well.." She looked up and out through the barred window before answering me." We don't want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn't cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them."" But if somebody loved one them, " I asked, "wouldn't it be a good idea to let them have one? To keep, I mean?"" Yes, it would be. But not everyone would love them and take care of them as you would. I wish I could give them all away tomorrow." She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. "But I can't. My heart would break if I saw just one of those animals lying by the wayside uncared for, unloved. No, Jennings. It's better if we keep them together. Jennings Michael Burch

Oh I'm sure you're right, " Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears. Arthur Golden

Life's a book filled on pages Just awaiting to be written. Some don't open it for ages, Maybe afraid of being bitten. Ana Claudia Antunes

All forms of writing are an act of conception; writing must lead to creation. Each time that we write, we begin again. Writing is an act of self-affirmation. Each time that we place our thoughts onto paper, we receive a new opportunity to claim our reality. Writing is also an act of explication and deconstruction. Writing empowers us to shape and modify our fiery constitutions. Writing allows us to explore the essential ingredients that lead to a life of serenity by exhibiting compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness. . Kilroy J. Oldster

I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?. Arthur Golden

I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be Arthur Golden

We write our personal story as intermittent authors; the narrator is always searching for a unitive point of view. We strive to perceive oneself from a unified perspective, but it is virtually impossible to do so. Human perception of the self is an illusion. We constantly sift through shifting memories. We experience the present under the fragrance cast by the past and under the illusionary aura of the future. Kilroy J. Oldster

...To see your life flow in obscurity among the treasures of the heart and of nature, happy in your anonymity, and to occasionally lose yourself in reading or in the pleasure of being a sensitive admirer of the fine arts; that’s the image of modern life you’re looking for! Paul Amadeus Dienach

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream, ' 'Against the Current, ' 'Minority of One, ' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth–all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. . Christopher Hitchens

Having to admit that you are depressed makes one feel less than. Broken. Yes, that's what it is. Broken. Gillian Marchenko

I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into my belly. (p. 52) Barbara Blatner

Oh. she heard it too-no waters coursing, canyon empty, sun soundless- and the beast your life nowhere hiding (p. 103) Barbara Blatner

...gripping the rim of the sink you claw your way to stand and cling there, quaking with will, on heron legs, and still the hot muck pours out of you. (p. 27) Barbara Blatner

Blue-gold sky, fresh cloud, emerald-black mountain, trees on rocky ledges, on the summit, the tiny pin of a telephone tower-all brilliantly clear, in shadow and out. and on and through everything everywhere the sun shines without reservation (p. 97) Barbara Blatner

A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache. Catherine The Great

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

Personal essay writing that incites the mind and instigates personal growth involves examination and re-examination, a process of noticing and reflecting upon what a person perceives. Essayistic writing is an osmotic process wherein a person intuitively absorbs information and ideas, allows inchoate thoughts to gestate in the unconscious mind, and then consciously places the emergent strands of language and logic into an orderly and expressive format. Kilroy J. Oldster

All good things spring from Self-Love N. Sophronia Crosby

You know, Becky, you haven't been the same since that crowbar fell on your head. Becky Lewellen Povich

Behind every humorist who delights in knifing hypocrites is a major self-critic. Wendy Aron

A shaman and a writer each serve as their communities’ seers by engaging in extraordinary acts of conscientious study of the past and the present and predicting the future. An inner voice calls to the shaman and an essayistic writer to answer the call that vexes the pernicious spirit of their times. Shamanistic writers induce a trance state of mind where they lose contact with physical reality through a rational disordering of the senses, in an effort to encounter for the umpteenth time the great unknown and the unutterable truths that structure existence. An afflicted person seeking clarification of existence cannot ignore the shamanistic calling of narrative exposition. Thus, I shall continue this longwinded howl — making a personal immortality vessel — into the darkness of night forevermore. Kilroy J. Oldster

Every book adds a grain of humility and humanity to the communal ground that we tread. Writing is the one method that the modern shaman employs to interpret reality and create messages that will provide a beacon of light to other members of our tribe. So long as ignorance, misery, and confusion remain on earth, and people look to expand their state of awareness, books that contribute to the aesthetics of despair, a world composed of mist and shadows cannot be useless. Writing is a personal effort to coexist with the banality, tedium, and anguish of living a fated life. Writing is a shamanistic act of faith because seeking to link thoughts together in order to understand how one fits into nature’s wonderland is a quest for unity and wholeness, the ultimate medicinal poultices that all self-disciplined shaman and alchemistic writers aspire to achieve. Kilroy J. Oldster

Writing is an exhausting and demoralizing task that destroys human conceits. Writing an elongated series of personal essay opens a person’s mind to explore paradoxes and discover previously unrealized personal truths. Writing is as arduous as any trek into the wilderness. Every sentence takes a writer deeper into the jungle of the mind, a world of frightening inconsistencies created by our waking life’s desire that the world of chaos conform to our convenience. . Kilroy J. Oldster

Recounting the narrative of our personal story in a methodical and chronological manner helps us see our life in a historical perspective. Telling our personal stories allows us to bring hibernated memories out of seclusion. Reexamination of our historical existence under the light of growing conscious awareness assist us make psychological breakthroughs. Analyzing the elemental substance of our personal story from a sundry of viewpoints employing techniques of literature, philosophy, logical reasoning, and abstract thinking assist us perceive our discrete chronicle in symbolic terms and in mythological context. . Kilroy J. Oldster

I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a man-eater. The length of road immediately in front of me was brilliantly lit by the moon, but to right and left the overhanging trees cast dark shadows, and when the night wind agitated the branches and the shadows moved, I saw a dozen tigers advancing on me, and bitterly regretted the impulse that had induced me to place myself at the man-eater's mercy. I lacked the courage to return to the village and admit I was too frightened to carry out my self-imposed task, and with teeth chattering, as much from fear as from cold, I sat out the long night. As the grey dawn was lighting up the snowy range which Iwas facing, I rested my head on my drawn-up knees, and it was in this position my men an hour later found me fast asleep; of the tiger I had neither heard nor seen anything. . Jim Corbett

Storytelling creates a healing serum. The thematic unguent of our personal story represents a fusion of the ineffable truths that each of us must discover within ourselves. Kilroy J. Oldster

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

Honesty is vulnerability. Sadly, not everyone can handle someone’s honesty. However, lying allows people to be comfortable. Shannon L. Alder

For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food. Anthony Bourdain

Hiding white lies only causesanxiety and low self- esteem. Melissa Mae Palmer (on living with a mysterious illness and not telling a soul) Melissa Mae Palmer

The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom. Kilroy J. Oldster

The artistic bend is a sell-out. It's all truth, or it's no good. EIther write what's in the heart, all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the uglier, the privat and even more private and it's a book worth reading. Not willing to go there? Do yourself and the world a favor: Don't write it until you're ready to do so. Only then is it your truest artist being heard. And only then will the world want to hear what you have to say."- Wendy K. Williamson 9/25/14. Wendy K. Williamson

Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun. Ishmael Beah

What most people see is a badge, behind and beyond the badge is what they need to know...the person. Unknown

Human souls enfold the elemental elements that we configure to provide our own distinctive explanation of what it means to be alive. By opening our hearts and minds, by engaging in intuitive self-exploration, by telling our life stories full of prejudices and mindboggling idiosyncrasies, and by listening to the multivariate stories of our brethren, we add a ray of light to the spiraling consciousness of humankind. Kilroy J. Oldster

Your whole life and the story of your journey is the landscape picture on the front of the box of a 1, 000 piece puzzle. The pieces are each a small sticky note that ends in mid-sentence. You simply need to figure out where each one starts and ends. Ashly Lorenzana

Conformity is deformity Sharon Desruisseaux

It turns out, after a lot of exploration, that I'm not really a princess. A swell gal, sure, but not a princess. Julie Klam

We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin. Mary Karr

There is a cost to loving anything, or anyone. No one tells you that when you are young. Unknown

The head can travel a far piece while the body sits in one spot. It can traverse many decades, and many conversations can be had, even with the dead. Mary Karr

Joy, it is, which I’ve never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self — delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving. Mary Karr

Tomorrow! How sweet its prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible. Mary Karr

But it's a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go. Mary Karr

It's hard to be an articulate ghost. Mary Karr

Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation. Mary Karr

Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness. Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down - rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen. Laurie Lee

Me dad planted that tree, ’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window. The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house. Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill’s dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny’s age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world. . Laurie Lee

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience. Young

The analytical framework of this comprehensive field study of what it means to be an American examines how a person’s personality, culture, technology, occupational and recreational activities affect a person’s sense of purposefulness and happiness. The text evaluates the nature of human existence, formation of human social relations, and methods of communication from various philosophic and cultural perspectives. The ultimate goal is to employ the author’s own mind and personal experiences as a filter to quantify what it means to live and die as a thinking and reflective person. Kilroy J. Oldster

If you don’t write your memoirs down then time will swallow them up, leaving no leftovers. Sahara Sanders

For whatever time I have to live, I intend to enjoy myself." - Midge Rylander in Eighteen Months To Live. Rachele Baker

We learn to appreciate what we achieve, no matter how small the achievement, because we do it ourselves. - Midge Rylander in Eighteen Months To Live Rachele Baker

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today. Alexander Vassilieff

Did you ever think about writing memoirs? You are a writer, and it may be interesting for people to read your story." I hate memoirs. But I am sure I will write a book about the Bowery Mission, ” Michael said. Stevan V. Nikolic

I was born in the house my father built. Richard M. Nixon

...no matter how frequently we came, when we arrived, they acted as if we had been away one hundred years. [His grandparents' greeting.] James Vescovi

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

None of my friends had grandparents like these.... Tony and Desolina were exotic. James Vescovi

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. ‘Look at him! ’ Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, ‘That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he’s done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on! ’ Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. ‘That’s not fat, ’ he declared, punching himself in the stomach, ‘that’s good healthy meat! ’ He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks. . Christopher Isherwood

Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self-delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving. Mary Karr