Memoirs Quotes

“If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.”
― Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

“It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn't make us safer.”
― Piper Kerman, Orange Is the New Black

“Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”
― Alexander Vassilieff, ODYSSEYA -- An Epic Journey: From Russia to Australia

“I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“I want to be able to fulfill someone’s heart’s desires and make them happy. Learn new things about life and have memorable experiences.”
― Charles Dyson, A Decade of Desire: Erotic Memoirs from The Office Diaries

“Yes, sir, I will,” there was a nervous edge in her voice, but now it was too late. Her session had begun.”
― Charles Dyson, A Decade of Desire: Erotic Memoirs from The Office Diaries

“Conformity is deformity”
― Sharon Desruisseaux

“Yes, I’m sure the universe connected us and may do so again when it deems the time is right. Until then, in only a few short hours combined with a set of lovely messages, I have enjoyed something rarely found, a gemstone in the sands of time.”
― Charles Dyson, A Decade of Desire: Erotic Memoirs from The Office Diaries

“He opened the letter and read its contents. A stiffness grew in his loins as her sexual fantasies were laid bare, written out before him.”
― Charles Dyson, A Decade of Desire: Erotic Memoirs from The Office Diaries

“I feel like a massive wave of life just washed over me. While luck comes in many guises, winning the lottery pales into nothing compared to meeting unique people.”
― Charles Dyson, A Decade of Desire: Erotic Memoirs from The Office Diaries

“Sister, why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Cage the animals at night?"
"Well..." She looked up and out through the barred window before answering me."We don't want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn't cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them."

"But if somebody loved one them," I asked, "wouldn't it be a good idea to let them have one? To keep, I mean?"

"Yes, it would be. But not everyone would love them and take care of them as you would. I wish I could give them all away tomorrow." She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. "But I can't. My heart would break if I saw just one of those animals lying by the wayside uncared for, unloved. No, Jennings. It's better if we keep them together.”
― Jennings Michael Burch, They Cage the Animals at Night: The True Story of an Abandoned Child's Struggle for Emotional Survival

“Unique people are always worth some effort. I’m very blessed to know a handful; time spent with them is a joy for the soul.”
― Charles Dyson, A Decade of Desire: Erotic Memoirs from The Office Diaries

“Passing through the early fog, the fruitseller’s boat nudged the edge of the canal beside the Palazzo Malipiero. All around was stillness. Casanova whispered to me, “This is the type of pause that occurs just in the instant before la petite mort. The breath held before the gasp followed by the exquisite release.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“As libertines we seek to find and provide pleasures for others before pleasing ourselves. Libertines are never boorish, profane or blasphemous. We seek to lessen any cause for offence while maximizing pleasure. After our liaisons, our return is eagerly anticipated, and our departure is mourned. For most men the reverse is the case. In a world where most men are barely on before they are off again, we take the time and the care to be gentle lovers and build the sighs and the panting of true delight.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a man-eater. The length of road immediately in front of me was brilliantly lit by the moon, but to right and left the overhanging trees cast dark shadows, and when the night wind agitated the branches and the shadows moved, I saw a dozen tigers advancing on me, and bitterly regretted the impulse that had induced me to place myself at the man-eater's mercy. I lacked the courage to return to the village and admit I was too frightened to carry out my self-imposed task, and with teeth chattering, as much from fear as from cold, I sat out the long night. As the grey dawn was lighting up the snowy range which I
was facing, I rested my head on my drawn-up knees, and it was in this position my men an hour later found me fast asleep; of the tiger I had neither heard nor seen anything.”
― Jim Corbett, The Champawat Man-eater

“I am not a fool. This is why Olga was so distraught - because I teetered the line, and most times my left foot was a paperweight clinging to hell.”
― Rebekah Armusik, Mariposa

“We're not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy's assassin.”
― Mary Karr, Lit

“As long as I'm between home and the clinic I do all right. But out in the real world, I feel like prey. I slink around and can feel people looking at me. I feel their eyes boring into me. I feel what they're thinking: Watch her, she could go off anytime. But within the walls of my farmhouse, I climb out of the protective shell, my arms slowly rise like a phoenix, and I dance, wail, fly around the room and then collapse, crying, in front of my mirrors. I start to see in the mirror what it is I really look like, instead of what I was trained from the womb to see. I do not write about it. I do not talk about it. I do not know what I am doing. But just like a baby bird, I am blinking once-sealed eyes and unfolding damp wings. I cannot articulate the past. A part of me knows it's there, lurking, just behind what I can acknowledge, but it is not within sight. And I am keeping it that way. ”
― Julie Gregory, Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“Autobiographies are always written as if the author had it all mapped out with perfect foresight, ignoring the risks and uncertainties at that time. This misleads, as much as those beautiful photographs of a past holiday abstract from the heat, the mosquitoes, and the lack of connectivity.”
― Raghuram G. Rajan, I Do What I Do

“All of this made me feel better about myself, and I was grateful to the books for teaching me-without my even having to read them- that there were people in the world more desperate, more self-absorbed, more boring than I was. - about memoirs”
― Brock Clarke, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“All you need is love,
All you are is love,
All there is is love!”
― Sanja Rozman, Sanje o rdečem oblaku

“[A]n old writer’s memory is the whore of his imagination. We all reinvent our pasts, I said, but writers are in a class of their own.”
― John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

“But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“Memoir today is like one big game of misery poker: The more outlandish, outrageous, or just plain out-there the recounted life, the more likely the book is to attract the attention of reviewers, talk-show bookers, and, ultimately, the public.”
― Ben Yagoda

“There is a cost to loving anything, or anyone. No one tells you that when you are young.”
― Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, The Going and Goodbye: A Memoir