Walter Benjamin Quotes

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

I wanted to write what I remembered to be true.

When you are writing a memoir, you have the advantage of knowing how it all ends. It's just taking your life apart and putting it together again.

'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical.

One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

By calling it a memoir, I meant is as a collection of memories. I thought it was (a more) artful (title) than documentary.

I'm writing my biography. It's my business. This is what happened in my life, and I'm writing about it.

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.

Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.

I think at the age of 50, everyone should write their own autobiography.

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).

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.

I live my memoirs, I don’t have to write them down.

I've written a lot of autobiography, which also involved listening.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it.

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

I hope I didn't bore you too much with my life story.

I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.