Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story.

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

The real subject of autobiography is not one's experience but one's consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool.

You can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.

Writing was the soul of everything else ... Wanting to be a writer was wanting to be a person.

Writing about why you write is a funny business, like scratching what doesn't itch. Impulses are mysterious, and explaining them must be done with mirrors, like certain cunning slight-of-hand routines.

Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.