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I would never do a printed memoir. I've been asked to publish a memoir from years by different publishers and literary agents. I think it wouldn't be great for me because all I'd really want to talk about it music and I'd rather just play it.
Natalie MerchantI don't remember reading much at all during the writing of Eileen. I go through several years-long dry spells and I don't feel like reading at all. I was working part-time for a guy in Venice, California while I drafted Eileen. He wanted help in writing his memoir. The research had a lot to do with the 60s, so that must have informed my sense of the place and time in my novel, and perhaps even the memoir point-of-view. He was also from New England. It was a fun job. I learned a lot about motorcycle clubs, Charles Manson, hopping freight trains.
Ottessa MoshfeghMemoir is trustworthy and its truth assured when it seeks the relation of self to time, the piecing of the shards of personal experience into the starscape of history's night. The materials of memoir are humble, fugitive, a cottage knitting industry seeking narrative truth across the crevasse of time as autobiography folds itself into the vast, fluid essay that is history. A single voice singing its aria in a corner of the crowded world.
Patricia HamplI guess that my opinion of writing about real people is informed by defenses of Joyce Maynard's memoir, that the experiences were a part of my life as well, and that I have the right to write about my life.
Marie CallowayWhen people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I donโt write any kind at all: Iโm trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.
Leslie JamisonNo one who reads this book will remain unchanged or unaffected-Julene Bair's story arcs from the cornfields of Kansas and Nebraska to the food on our tables and the gas in our cars. There is always a price to be paid, she reminds us, for the pleasures and comforts of this day. If you read only one memoir this year, this is the one to read and pass along.
Jonis AgeeI feel that I'm an essayist and that my best work gets done in that form. I wanted to do a book where the essays could exist on their own terms. A book that was neither a book of essays that were shoehorned into a memoir, nor [one where] the essays had been published elsewhere first, [because] then they would kind of bear the marks of those publications.
Meghan DaumWith the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist.
David HalberstamI often wonder if you wrote your memoir today, if your life story would be lived on the edge of possibility, if you held wonder in one hand and courage in the other and truly believed that anything was possible.
Jean HoustonIn preparing the present volume, it has been the aim of the author to do full justice to the ample material at his command, and, where possible, to make the illustrations tell the main story to anatomists. The text of such a memoir may soon lose its interest, and belong to the past, but good figures are of permanent value. [Justifying elaborate illustrations in his monographs.]
Othniel Charles MarshKaethe Schwehn's poignant memoir explores longing, both spiritual and physical, community and faith, in prose that is calm, lovely, and filled with clear-eyed honesty and grace. Tailings is simply an exquisite book.
Dinty W. MooreOh, my God. What if you wake up some day, and you're 65 or 75, and you never got your novel or memoir written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools or oceans because your thighs were jiggly or you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.
Anne LamottA remarkable memoir that's packed with anecdotes, advice and humor, all while maintaining a high level of dignity and self-awareness.
Steve MartinI'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.
Jamie Lee CurtisThere is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.
Augusten BurroughsI think that's the thing that memoir can do more than anything it does; it testifies and bears witness to the existence of people whose lives, pleasures and virtues would never have been testified to without my having done it. That makes me really glad.
Richard Ford[John Carlos] has spent much of his life since that time as a dedicated human rights advocate and public speaker, and he is out now with a wonderful new text; a memoir, in fact.
Tavis SmileyMemoir is actually the most egoless genre, even though it might seem ostensibly so much ego-driven. In order for it to succeed, you have to dissolve the self into these larger universal truths, and explore these deeper mysteries. If itโs purely autobiographical and ego-driven, itโs going to fail.
Nick FlynnGradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.
Friedrich NietzscheI dont know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, its always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there.
Koren ZailckasThe other reason I didn't want to fictionalize it is because one of the main points of publishing a memoir in nonfiction was that I wanted to write about what had been a very lonely experience. The books that most saved my life as a kid were the ones that articulated lonely experiences that I had thought were mine alone.
Melissa FebosWildlife was the only thing we've written together with Paul Dano. It's based on a book by this author Richard Ford, who just published a memoir about his family that's really wonderful. Paul fell in love with his book, and we optioned it ourselves, and he took a first pass at writing it. He asked me for notes, and then our note session devolved into an argument really quickly.
Zoe KazanDon't think of Diana Vreeland's memoir as a book; it's more like a lunch. A bit of souffle, a glass of champagne, some green grapes - light, bubbly and slightly tart - all served up by an egocentric but inventive hostess.
Cathleen McGuiganA producer came to me about doing a memoir, and at first I thought, "Well, it's a little bland." But then I realized that almost everything that's happened to me was the result of being in the right place at the right time. And I thought "Well, luck has a lot to do with it," so I wrote it from that perspective.
Dick Van DykeI think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.
Sue Monk KiddAs a critic, I try to stay neutral about movies before I see them, but I really wanted "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to be great. It's based on a barbed memoir by Kim Barker called "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan." And its stars Tina Fey, out of her comfort zone, just as Barker was a fish out of water when, in 2004, she began covering the Afghanistan occupation for the Chicago Tribune.
David EdelsteinMadame Bellwings, Memoir Elf Coordinator, was not at all pleased with this request, because elves who write the memoirs of teenage girls have the habit of returning to the magical realm with atrocious grammar. They can't seem to shake the phrases "watever" and "no way," and they insert the word like into so many sentences that the other elves start slapping them...and for no apparent reason occasionally call out the name Edward Cullen.
Janette RallisonI've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.
Augusten BurroughsMemoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.
Jeannette WallsWith tremendous clarity and wisdom, Daniel Tomasulo has crafted a memoir at once heartbreaking and uplifting. Layers of time and memoryโchildhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle ageโare so beautifully revealed here, a trenchant reminder that our pasts are alive inside of us. There are psychologists who can write, and writers who can psychologize, but rarely have the two met on the page with such moving, profound results.
Dani ShapiroI believe the personal is the collective. One of the ironies of writing memoir is in using the "I" it becomes an alchemical "we." This is the sorcery of literature.
Terry Tempest WilliamsTo read Helen Macdonald's memoir, H Is for Hawk, is to feel as though Emily Bronte just turned up at your door, trailing all the windy, feral outdoors into your living room.
Maureen CorriganMy Family and Other Saints echoes Gerald Durrell's classic memoir, My Family and Other Animals, not only in its title, but in its wonderful humor and lyrical prose. Like Durrell, Kirin Narayan takes the reader to a fascinating world far from our own, and brings to life its myriad sights, sounds and smells, while revealing the profound cultural beliefs of its people. India is just the most complex character among a cast of characters-family members, gurus, hippies, and neighbors-all of whom I now count as old friends.
Judith BarringtonHenry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.
Leslie FiedlerShe had all the best things wrong with herโincest, insanity, drug addiction, bulimia, alopecia: you name it. All the perfect stuff for a memoir. Sheโs so lucky.
Peter CameronI'm not one of those people who's so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It's kind of risky writing a memoir when you're really part of a larger universe.
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