Natalie Merchant Quotes

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.

Former president George W. Bush released his new memoir. By the way, 'memoir' is just a fancy word for 'a bunch of stuff that happened to me.

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.

This may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.

Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought!

I live my memoirs, I don’t have to write them down.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.

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.

In the winter of 2012, as my fiftieth birthday approached, I began to write what turned into my autobiography, a look at my own life through the lens of food.

I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.

An autobiography is a life story. It starts when you're born and continues until the end.

One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

Must I tell the story of my life again?

You know, I'm trying to sometimes sit down and write some stories about my childhood and maybe one when I'm an old lady put them out like a book.

To be human is to have a collection of memories that tells you who you are and how you got there.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

I've been asked to write an autobiography, and I've started it a couple of times, on different angles, and maybe one day I will, but you know what? There's time for that because I'd like to have the whole story.

I told my whole life story in my book.