We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.

Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

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.

Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story.

The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

The world is full of mystery but it must not be choked with secrets: we must talk to one another.

Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.