Calvin Trillin Quotes

I have some very good friends who've written memoirs, but it's not for me. It's just not a format that I'm interested in.

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

All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

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

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

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.

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.

My Life in CIA is the first time that I've ever written a story in my own name.

The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.

If you're going to write about your life, you must write about your life.

The easiest thing to write was 'Fever Pitch' because it was a memoir.

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.

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.

Memoir implies the need to reveal something about yourself - to recount your life for educational purposes.

I'm not sure I ever would write a memoir.

An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived.

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.

I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer.

Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.

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.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.

In the winter of 2012, as my fiftieth birthday approached, I began to write what turned into my autobiography, a look at my own life through the lens of food.

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

Not to be too 'Tale of Two Cities' about it, but I find writing a memoir easier than writing fiction, and more difficult.