David Rakoff Quotes

I believe that one reason I began writing essays - a form without a form, until you make it - was this: you didn't have to borrow from an emotionally and visually upsetting past, as one did in fiction, apparently, to write your story.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

My writing did turn out to be quite intact, as it has all my experiences gathered at one place.

I absolutely wasn't going to write a book if it was just going to be about punk.

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.'

I tend to write from a personal place, and most of the time when I'm writing by myself, it's coming from something I've experienced.

I think if I was interested in writing on my own, I would be a novelist - then you could write about yourself, and that would be it. You wouldn't need anyone else.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there.

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.

I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.

As far as I am concerned, I write novels, and other people can do the labelling.