Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.

My work is not about my life history. It's not about the story of my neurosis.

I don't want to get into autobiographies; I don't want to talk about myself.

I want an autobiography without revealing any personal information.

Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.

I'm interested in people's stories, so I decided to tell part of mine.

If everything in my career has to be made into an autobiography, then there will be people who might think that I am trying to make a statement. But I don't want to do that.

I have never, ever read anything written about me.

If I ever wrote an autobiography - and I won't - it would be called 'Don't Google Me.'

I find it very boring to keep on talking about myself! Which is why I find giving interviews also very boring.

I don't think you're ever ready to read your life back to yourself and try to make it entertaining for others.

I always say that I take my life and turn it into story, and I certainly did that with 'Countdown'.

With memoir, you have the clay of your life to work with. When you're writing a novel, you have to make the clay first.

I know that it can be really difficult to read about your own life... in someone else's words.

People have asked me about doing an autobiography, but I don't think my life is that interesting.

'White Boy from Sacramento' is just sort of a tongue-in-cheek autobiography. I hoped it came out a little humorous, but it's really all true.

I like to talk about my life.

I've never been a confessional writer.

The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.

My life and my legs have been an open book.

I had to detach myself from myself, if that makes any sense, to conjure an authentic first-person voice. In that sense, it was similar to writing a first-person novel. But I was writing about real people, not fictional ones - myself, my family, my friends and boyfriends and ex-husband, and that was extremely tricky.

I am myself the matter of my book.

Truth gets buried, that's why people write autobiographies.

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.