Life Writing Quotes

My mother always said that everyone should be required to write an autobiography of their lives.

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.

I think there is a great tendency toward autobiography among women today. It is perhaps facile - and I say that even though I have written one myself.

And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others. Thanks to this genre, writers of nonfiction can now use the tools of the reporter, the points of view and ear for dialog of a novelist, and the passion and wordplay of the poet.

By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.

In terms of my work, I've never been reticent in terms of defining my sexuality. I write about my life.

I think it's difficult, if you're a quite private person like I am, to write about your life very intimately.

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.

Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version.

I love memoirs and autobiographies in general.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.'

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

Someone calls biography the home aspect of history.

Keeping a Diary all my life helped me to discover some basic elements essential to the vitality of writing.

I want to write my life. I want to be able to write my life. You are a second away from saying it. You have no idea how much I love you.

When you're teaching creative nonfiction, it helps to have written about your life in a very open way, because you can say, 'Look, how much are you willing to risk emotionally to write? How careful can you be with the other people you're writing about?'

I gave myself the small task of writing honestly about the kind of life I knew. I believe there is some value in carrying out that task, however limited.

I want work that, possessing as thin a membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question of how the writer solves being alive.

I think that I write about stuff that others don't write about. I don't have a bunch of love songs cuz I don't really have much boy experience. I just write about what I am actually going through in my real life.

I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

I don't find that writing about parts of my life had much effect except in some cases to improve my memory. To get into parts of the past I want to recall very vividly, I use a form of directed meditation.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

I've always considered myself a nonfiction artist.