Best 1003 quotes in «memoir quotes» category

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

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 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.

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.

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 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?

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

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

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

How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge of the memoirist.

Humor writers: 1) Write 2) Laugh 3) Laugh when they write 4) Write when they laugh

I also get that we women in particular must work very hard to keep our fantasies as clearly and cleanly delineated from our realities as possible, and that sometimes it can take years of effort to reach such a point of sober discernment.

I always felt awkward and unfinished, unworthy of love, suspicious of affection offered. My mother's absence became a great presence in my life.

...I am about eight years old when I first become aware of being other--foreign, outside, separate. Because this lesson comes from my own family, it resonates deeper and truer than playground taunts ever have.

I am a product of two worlds and each world has given me a reason to love, be kind and grow strong.

How long you guys been renovating?” Craig asked Arianna. “About a month.” “How much longer?” Arianna sighed. “The contractor messed up the counters, so who knows.” “Preaching to the choir.” “Yeah?” “Oh, yeah. But in the end everything turned out for the best.” “How so?” “Well, for one, I switched from laminate to granite.” “Granite . . .” She exhaled, confounded, as if the granite countertop quandary was the most perplexing philosophical question of all time. “Yeah . . .We’re torn.” “More expensive, but aesthetically superior,” Craig lobbied. “Also retains value longer.” Knowing the sexual perversity about to transpire, I couldn’t reconcile that I was suddenly in an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Granted, I didn’t know from normal pre–group sex discussion topics, but I was pretty sure home improvement wasn’t on the list.

How well do you know the people who raised you? Look around your dining room table. Look around at your loved ones, especially the elders. The grandparents and the aunts and uncles who used to give you shiny new quarters and unvarnished advice. How much do you really know about their lives. Perhaps you've heard that they served in a war, or lived for a time in a log cabin, or arrived in this country speaking little or no English. Maybe they survived the Holocaust or the Dust Bowl. How were they shaped by the Depression or the Cold War, or the stutter-step march towards integration in their own community? What were they like before they married or took on mortgages and assumed all the worries that attend the feeding, clothing, and education of their children? If you don't already know the answers, the people who raised you will most likely remain a mystery, unless you take the bold step and say: Tell me more about yourself.

I am in the unthinkable situation that people cannot bear to contemplate.

I am not and autobiographical writer--one can't be without a solid and explicable self--and read all autobiographical writers with the same curiosity. What kind of life permits a person the right to become his own subject?

I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark.

I am not your dog that you whistle for; I’m not a stray animal you call over, and I am not, I never have been, nor will I ever be, your “baby”!

I am not here to make you feel better, I am just here to make you feel worse

I am still not good enough. I am still not whole enough. I am still not pure enough. I am still weakness and sharp edges and broken, but He is good and pure and whole, all that I strive for but am not. I wake up every morning and I sit in silence and I choose to believe. I may speak. I may not. I let Him wrap up all my broken in to His grace. He takes me imperfect. This is the great mystery I never knew.

I associate so many fond memories with food. On that damp evening, along in a tiny restaurant smelling of mildew and lobster, I was 1,600 miles from everyone I knew and loved. After one bite of the pie, I closed my eyes, and taste transported me back to the warm, familiar comfort of my grandmother's kitchen. She always had a pie sitting on the kitchen counter, ready to serve, and a fresh pot of coffee brewing.

I avoided one-on-one situations, eye contact, and healthy relationships. Instead I took refuge in drinking too much, cheap sex, and sarcasm.