Tom Robbins Quotes

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

Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.

Basically, I think of fiction and non-fiction as different ways of engaging with the world. You reach a point where you feel you have said all you possibly can, in reportage or a review essay or a reflection on history, which 'From the Ruins of Empire' was.

I want Tom Clancy, the Maryland novelist, to write the story of the rest of my life.

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.

I think it's easier for me to write from experience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

It's actually easier to do autobiographical stories. The story is already there. It's a matter of carving away what doesn't fit rather than building up from nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 to tell stories in my writing but I definitely use my own life experiences to tell that story.

So much of what I write in fiction is based on true stories.

How you solve your problems are quite different. In non-fiction, you can always go back to the research, whereas in fiction, you have to go back to yourself - which is a little bit scary.

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

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.

I've written a lot of autobiography, which also involved listening.

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

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.