Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.

Do the thing that's less passive. Do the active thing. There's more of the human in that.

If there were nothing else, reading would--obviously--be worth living for.

My life burned inside me. Even such as it was, it was the only record of me, and it was my only creation, and something in me would not accept that it was insignificant.

Did anyone ever hear of an intelligent fantasy?

..though silence must add intensity to your intimate moments, it must also shrivel your soul to lie beside someone who doesn't talk to you.

Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.