Danielle Darrieux Quotes

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.

Recently I began reading my old diaries. Back to before the war. Gradually I became very depressed. The reason for that is probably that I wrote only when there were obstacles and halts to the flow of life, seldom when everything was smooth and even. ... As I read I distinctly felt what a half-truth a diary presents.

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

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that's Memoirs.

Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

I think most memoirs, though they purport to be about this particular time or this person you met, are really about the effect that person or time had on you.

My comedy notebooks are filled with random journal entries. It's all the same. I can look back on old joke notebooks, and know exactly what was going on in my life.

My act is pretty much me reflecting on what I want to talk about and what I think is funny and what has happened to me.

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

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

Memory narrativises itself.

I would like to continue to tell stories of what I did in a biographical way, so I will continue to write.

What makes writing a memoir difficult is harder to quantify. Is it learning to know when you're ready to talk about something? Is it seeing the structure in a lumpen mass of fact? Is it finding out what you were really like as other people saw you? Yes to each.

If you want to know anything about me, read my books - it's all there.

Maybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.

Oh, I don't keep a journal. How you remember an incident is dictated by your emotional state at the time. How you receive the information that is coming in is definitely based on your history and who you are.

Writing a memoir begins a process that doesn't necessarily end with publication. You begin to think about family life and stories and relationships, and those are ongoing.