Harvey Pekar Quotes

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.'

Each person's life is a story that is telling itself in the living.

'Marley and Me' was a book I was proud of and believed in, but I thought it would just have a modest audience because it is such a personal story about my marriage and my family.

I'm always inspired to write, and it's usually my own life experiences that inspire me.

By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events in the book were happening, I knew I'd probably write about them one day. I didn't want to. I'd studied fiction, and I was committed to establishing myself as a fiction writer first.

I like autobiographies. I wouldn't mind making one of those.

My writing is authentic, and whatever happens in my life is what I write about.

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.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

The further you go, what, I'm gonna wait til I'm 80? Naw, I'm tellin' my story now. I was just moved. I was moved to tell my story. You know? People write books all the time.

'Restaurant Man' is kind of the story, an unabridged story of what happened in my life, the good bad and ugly. Some people might glean some life lessons. It is honest, not written as a press release.

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.

When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

I don't write about my life in my column.

I hope I didn't bore you too much with my life story.

I've been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they don't tell you anything about me. I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

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

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

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.

Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.

I write to be truthful in my songs, which is why I wrote what's painfully truthful about my life in my autobiography.

The book is called 'Thanks for Nothing' and it's really the story of how I got into comedy and traces back every strand in my life that is relevant to that story. It's kind of an autobiography but isn't, as it stops about 25 years ago. It goes right up to the first time I do stand up.

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.