Memoir Quotes

“Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you.”
― Stephanie Klein, Straight Up and Dirty

“In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

“I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society…unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.”
― Tina Fey

“I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“The stars are brilliant at this time of night
and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break
for darling, the times are quite glorious.

I left him by the water’s edge,
still waving long after the ship was gone
and if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well.
There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew.
I used to go there to say goodbye.
I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them,
one way or the other,
leaving sin on my body
scrubbing tears off with salt
and I built my rituals in farewells.
Endings I still cling to.

So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.

He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head
and though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one
for I have used them myself and there is no coming back.
Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.

I turned away from the ocean
as not to fall for its plea
for it used to seduce and consume me
and there was this one night
a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells
and just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.
But I was younger then and easily fooled
and the ocean was deep and dark and blue
and I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.
I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.

Then days passed by and I spent them with my work
and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send.
But there is this one day every year or so
when the burden gets too heavy
and I collect my belongings I no longer need
and make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anew
and it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written words
and I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone.
Nothing left to hold me back.

You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss
like chains wrapped around my veins,
and if you see a fire from the shore tonight
it’s my chains going up in flames.

The time of moon i quite glorious.
We could have been so glorious.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.

The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.

In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”
― Susanna Kaysen

“Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.”
― Thomas M. Cirignano, The Constant Outsider

“I am forever engaged in a silent battle in my head over whether or not to lift the fork to my mouth, and when I talk myself into doing so, I taste only shame. I have an eating disorder.”
― Jena Morrow, Hollow: An Unpolished Tale

“Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“I learned in therapy the word "No" is a complete sentence.”
― Jaycee Dugard, A Stolen Life

“I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.”
― Julie Gregory, Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.”
― Will Rogers

“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
― Jeffrey Rasley, Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

“I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“You are putting yourself in serious danger...'

I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“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.”
― Brett Tate

“In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.”
― Kevin Alan Lee, The Split Mind: Schizophrenia from an Insider's Point of View

“So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.”
― Elbert Hubbard, Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book

“They had buried him under our elm tree, they said -- yet this was not totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.”
― Willie Morris, My Dog Skip

“Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.”
― Stephen King

“In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.”
― John Grogan, Bad Dogs Have More Fun: Selected Writings on Family, Animals, and Life from The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Into every sunny life a little rain must fall.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.”
― Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip

“No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“Your heart is the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting.”
― Ariel Gore, Atlas of the Human Heart

“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.”
― Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip

“Maybe it’s not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things, no matter how dark and ugly, there are shards of beauty if I look for them.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

“In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“Become your own soulmate. Then you'll always have someone watching your back, and you'll always have someone who loves you.”
― Rebecca O'Donnell, Freak: The True Story of an Insecurity Addict