Marya Hornbacher Quotes

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.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

I tend to find you have to be fairly vulnerable to get something... to get a perspective worth having. Which can be controversial. But I find telling someone what you're thinking about, what you want, and what you're afraid of can often help them give guidance.

Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.

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.

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.

Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it's about the stories; it's about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people's privacy.

I write autobiographically, although I apply liberal amounts of poetic license.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

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

It's exhausting writing nonfiction, particularly when it's personal. It's tiring, always speaking about things that are not necessarily fun retelling.

Everything is autobiography, even if one writes something that is totally objective. The fact that it's a subject that seizes you makes it autobiographical.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

I write to be truthful in my songs, which is why I wrote what's painfully truthful about my life in my autobiography.

I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.

After I wrote my memoir, 'A Long Way Gone,' I was a bit exhausted. I didn't want to write another memoir; I felt that it might not be sane for one to speak about himself for many, many, many years in a row. At the same time, I felt the story of 'Radiance of Tomorrow' pulling at me because of the first book.

My career is based off of me talking about my emotions.

You've got to make a decision when you write about your life, and I decided I was going to be honest, and some of those things will be embarrassing.

When I write for myself, I think about myself and draw from my own experience.

We've always written from personal experiences.

Look, anything any writer writes is going to be on some level autobiographical. Part of the funny/sad thing is that you don't always know how autobiographical you're being.

When you write, you don't really think of how honest you are being - it's only when you record that you understand how much of yourself you're giving.