Best 1003 quotes in «memoir quotes» category

Getting married and trying to conform to societies standards did not work. No one can cut a part of who they are out completely and expect to be successful. It is when I found my creative voice refusing to be silenced that things started moving forward again.

God has given us all our unique story. It's not one that flows easily or pretty, but the story is ours! Find it and treasure it...

God wants to take the fears that you and I are holding onto with both hands. He throws them aside, effortless, and then takes our empty hands in His and fills them with his love. He is not a hard driver. He wants to provide.

Going to the seaside in winter is like seeing your partner first thing in the morning. Ugly, depressing and troubled by wind.

...gripping the rim of the sink you claw your way to stand and cling there, quaking with will, on heron legs, and still the hot muck pours out of you. (p. 27)

Growth has been a constant part of my life and the getting up and editing out has been the hardest and most important part.

Had I glimpsed just a little of the suffering I would witness and the heartbreak I would endure, I would have fled in the other direction...But I could not foresee any of these things...And many years later, with tears in my eyes, I remembered my decision to follow this God no matter what the cost.

Happy people have everything to give.

Hari ini aku giat belajar, bukan karena aku tak menikmati masa muda, tapi aku paham bahwa belajar di masa tua bagaikan mengukir di atas air.

Haunted by demons of the past, hounded by demons not yet met, the nevermore and evermore left her little peace.” ~A Tale of Two Women

Having a blood family means suddenly revising a definition of family that I have, over many years, learned to accept. How can I hold both concepts in my mind or find room for both families in my heart?

Hate is a lazy-ass slob, wallowing in self-righteousness and fed by self-doubt and fear. Firing slings and arrows at difference, reason and knowledge, swelling with intolerance, spite, venom, and rage.

...Having felt the piercing gash of grief and lived through it, having loved to the brink of brokenness, and having learned the difference between friendship and frivolity, one eventually takes a conscious step through the invisible membrane that separates hubris from humility...

Have I mentioned the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, and the collapse of a section of the Bay Bridge, or the Oakland ‘firestorm’ of 1991? No need. There are already there, in my narratives that fail to mention them, in my dreams that fail to represent them.

He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty.

He clenched his small fist, bellowed his rage to the heavens, and resolved to never again recognize the authority of any man on earth.

He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.

Heaven's no place for one who thrives on hell.

He is already giving me more advice. Never, never, never put your saucisson or your cheese in the fridge. I feel guilty. I have treated my produce cruelly. I blame my mother. Why didn’t she teach me this – and tell me important things like not to hold an orange pumpkin against a cream jumper when I was peeling it. She could have told me how to preserve kiwifruit rather than my virginity – far more useful.

Here was a Jewish man-turned-woman making fun of Jewish men for not being manly enough.

He loves me, he loves me not. How many flowers must I kill before he loves me?” ~He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Her legacy was not--would not be--this disease. Phyllis Marie Unold Avery told us stories...It is my promise to her that for as long as I am able, I will recognize, restory, and remember.

Her lips full and inviting, she has an infectious laugh and glassy cackle in her eyes, and a 2000 volt sexual charisma that beckons me like a fluff girl on scuffed knees.

Her love of words is a private passion - one she would rather not share. In the house of her childhood though everything had to be shared. If she tried to hold anything back, they would search and find the hidden places. Her written words, discovered, read were just the source of more pain and punishment. This was why she loved poetry. They did not always understand it so they left it alone.

Her mother was stoned to death in China. During the Cultural Revolution, she was imprisoned, faced a sham trial by community party leaders, and executed. Her crime was her profession. My friend was very bitter.

He was a simple honest man. He never strayed, He never drank, he never smoked, and he never kissed a maid. And when he passed away his insurance was denied, Because he never lived, they claimed he never died.

He tilted my chin up and I swear those lips are magic. Witchcraft. Sorcery. Whatever it is in those lips, it’s addictive. Unassailable. I had to have more. More of this feeling of being wanted.

He wasn't a great man, but he had a great life.

He was sprightly and uncommonly good looking, with a quiet, magnanimous confidence that attracted people. He was my hero, too, and I listened to him. He gave me lots of wise advice. He told me to put myself in win-win situations, and that, “You have to know what you want, and you have to get it,

He was the one I compared all others to.

He's a little miracle," Charlie Brown chirps again, leaving me with Kamau, and I nod, thinking of miracles, and how they often happen when something terrible has taken place. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, it was a miracle, but Lazarus still had to be dead a few days to qualify. Jesus still wept when he heard his friend was dead. Miracles don't necessarily come without you getting your ass handed to you first.

He understood. In lovesickness we had found a common language.

Hey everyone. This is Elizabeth Stone, the one who wrote a A BOY I ONCE KNEW and BLACK SHEEP AND KISSING COUSINS. To those of you who read either one, thanks! But another Elizabeth Stone, not me, wrote WOMEN AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION and VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. Just setting the record straight!

He would never admit it, but he did have a heart of gold under all that crud. Solid, hard, impenetrable gold, but still gold, nonetheless.

Hi. My name is Sue. Have some Gu, Let me put this under you. IF you ask anyone who has ever taken a wilderness medicine course from me, this is how they remember me. This is what we say to someone we find injured or lost in the backcountry. Introduce yourself, add sugars and insulation to the patient.

His fingerprints covered my skin.

His lone withdrawing figure blended anonymously with the darkness, Dr Raven's quick, light steps becoming gradually distant, drowned out by the clicking staccato rush of trains, the steady drip of rainwater, and the clock of a nearby church as it heralded the hour

His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

How can it be that there is such a colossal gap between what we think we know about grief and mourning and what we actually find out when it comes to us?

His voice was like velvet, and it alone could seduce a woman into doing things she only fantasized about.

How could she have gotten herself here? To this place where she stood by while the man she adored checked out things to share with his wife? You knew what you were getting into. But that wasn’t really true. One never knew, not entirely, not until in really deep. She screamed and seethed in raw silence. Damien came in then, and spooned her. He hadn’t a clue she was an impulse away from getting up, dressing, and leaving. How shocked he would be, if she did that. And he’d conclude that she wasn’t the well-matched true lover that he thought he had finally, at long last, discovered. That thought ploughed a spike deeply through her. It gouged her so much that her breath stopped. It hurt her even more than did the wife. And she knew in that moment while he settled into bliss that she wasn’t going to leave, that leaving hadn’t had the slightest chance.

Hollywood Rule: RULE #1: You only need a license to do three things in the film business: blow up a building, wash someone’s hair, or drive a truck. You need no license, certification, documentation, or, for that matter, any filmmaking experience to be a writer, producer, director, actor, or even a studio executive. All you need is money.

How do we deal with all the people we’ve been? What happens when we have to confront them?

However, narrating what you remember, telling it to someone, does something else. The more a person recalls a memory, the more they change it. Each time they put it into language, it shifts. The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things. According to neuroscience. The safest memories are locked in the brains of people who can’t remember. Their memories remain the closest replica of actual events. Underwater. Forever.

How does what we see cloaked as “news” by “journalists” jive with his mandate that a journalist should strive to be objective, not blur facts with opinions, and maintain the impartial integrity of the noble profession of journalism?

How to hang on to that full-body joy I knew I was capable of and still understand it as elegy.

How many pages will it take to tell your story?

How many people have I heard claim their children as the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It's the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy - If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well. But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time's passage without the fear that you've just fritted away your time on earth without being relevant? You'll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being. I love children, but what if I don't have any? What kind of person does that make me? Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where "all is correct." But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course." Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.

How many humans over thousands of years have stood thus with their horses, seeing in them the lines of universal perfection, the majesty of grace and power, feeling stronger and more beautiful themselves for their contact with the magical power of such a steed? Such is the lure of the horse. In a world in which grace is neither synonymous nor usually compatible with power, the horse has remained an ancient symbol of strength and elegance, an icon of a majestic essence that exists far outside mere human beings. Because of the space that lies between us — only the cruelest amongst us ever truly conquers a horse — there is magic. “ — Margot Page