David Leavitt Quotes

I wanted to write what I remembered to be true.

I only write about what I do, what happens to me.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.

I recorded that because it happened to me. I wasn't making a point.

I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.

I've always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

It's kind of hard to tell your life story and state all facts and it still be sweet.

The idea of a memoir is to tell the truth. I know that often the truth hurts, but a lie hurts even more.

When you write an autobiography, it has to be authentic.

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

I write from my life, my experience. I'm selfish that way.

Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

'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 decided at 15 that I didn't want to be one of those artists that gets up and sings love songs they don't mean. I decided that I was going to be me to the fullest extent, that my songs were going to reflect relationships I've had, things I've been through, and even the stuff I'm embarrassed about.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it.

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

I never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason.

I don't consciously use my own life or experience at all.

I come out of real life.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

You don't cheat anybody out of their experience, whatever it is.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.