Min Jin Lee Quotes

I've never been a confessional writer.

When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.

I'm trying to figure myself out through my movies. Whether it's big stuff like what we're doing here, or little stuff like, 'Why aren't I happier?' With every film I feel like I'm apologising for something. I feel I'm most successful when I'm looking for something that embarrasses me about my character that I'd like to expose.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

It's true that all my novels have been versions of myself to some degree.

It's pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

My first novel, 'In the Drink,' begun when I was 29 and floundering and published when I was 36 and married, was about a 29-year-old woman whose life was even more screwed up than my own had been.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

The first person is a tradition I relate to and that I use; historically, it's been the voice I work in. But the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I'm referred to as a 'confessional' writer.

A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

First novels tend to be blood-lettings, and they're focused on you, not the reader.

All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

Writing has certainly helped me explore about 20,000 versions of my authentic self. I suppose that's what most writers discover if they write long enough: there are a lot of selves roaming around in there.

To me, writing is a personal thing; I write super-personal, autobiographically.

As autobiographical as say the stuff on 'Rumours' was, I don't think we thought of it as such when we were writing it.

We've always written from personal experiences.

I remember the first time I ever showed my parents a song that I had written. The content may have been a little darker than they were used to, or really introspective in a way that may have been uncomfortable. I thought they'd retaliate with some kind of judgment or concern about whether I was feeling all right, but they were proud of it.

I'm so proud of 'As She Pleases.' It's a really personal record, and I put so much of myself into it that; it feels like I am sharing part of my soul with the world by releasing it.

With each one of my films, I'm exploring one of my own issues and I try to expose myself a little in the film.

One of the goals of a spiritual practice is self-awareness, and one of the best tools of self-awareness is simple emotional vulnerability.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

Most things I go through I have to write about.