Viv Albertine Quotes

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.

Memories, impressions and emotions from the first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant.

Harper Collins gave me a letter of intent saying that they want me to pen down my autobiography. When I was recollecting the incidents of my life for that, I selected only those incidents which were turning points in my life. I staged it instead of writing it.

I love memoirs and autobiographies in general.

There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.

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.

Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.

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.

I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me.

I love memoirs and biographies, learning about other people's lives. Two of the ones that I loved so much were actually edited by the same person who edited my book, too. I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I loved 'Glass Castle' so much.

I just wanted to compile these stories about growing up with my father and I wanted people to be able to enjoy them individually, but also the entire book as a whole.

Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting that they could write their autobiography. And in the end that's why I find people interesting.

Maybe the 'Million Little Pieces' of the world are so popular because no one ever writes memoirs about PTA chairwomen; what memoirists do, and often get in trouble for, is bring interesting lives to light.

Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting.

I feel autobiographies should be written when you're retiring and there's so much to talk about as you've been working for so many years then. It becomes more interesting and there's more material to go in the autobiography.

In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.

Too many memoirs focus on childhoods and it's a bit turgid.

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

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

Nobody's life is interesting enough to warrant a third memoir.

I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude.

My books are written from personal experience, from memories, and from stories that come to me from all places.

Autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two.

I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them.

I feel I have to live a little longer before I write a sequel to my auto biography which covers my experiences up until October 1991.