Matt Besser Quotes

We don't only tell stories when we set out to tell stories, our memory tells us stories. That is, what we get to keep from our experiences is a story.

I'm very interested in structure, how multiple stories are assembled in different ways; that is what memory does as well.

Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary.

Some things we forget. But many things we remember on the mental screen, which is the biggest screen of all.

Memory narrativises itself.

If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." . . . And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by - or rather, things that are

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

That reminds me of something that happened to me when I was a kid.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

About the only thing that I have - or had, because it's failing me lately - is my memory. I had a really good memory. I was always terribly protective of that fact.

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.

I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.

Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy.

When you are writing a memoir, you have the advantage of knowing how it all ends. It's just taking your life apart and putting it together again.

The story is more important to me than the part.

Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

What I'm passionate about is telling stories which mean something to me.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory. I like the atmospheres that result if episodes are narrated through the haze of memory.

If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.

I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.

I'm very detail oriented. I think that's why people enjoy my memoirs - because I tend to remember everything.

No one ever sits you down at age eight and says, 'Aminatta, this is what's happened so far.' You have to work it out for yourself, and by the time you do, it's ancient history to many of the players. We're trying to make sense of the past, so we start to excavate our memories.