Peter Hedges Quotes

I very much want to write about some elements of my own growing up.

I decided with 'Savage Season' to use a lot of things in my life as the basis.

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.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

I've been asked to write an autobiography, and I've started it a couple of times, on different angles, and maybe one day I will, but you know what? There's time for that because I'd like to have the whole story.

There is a lot of my childhood in 'The Sandcastle Girls.'

I've been working on my autobiography, just pecking away in longhand. The more you write, the more you remember. The more you remember, the more detail you recall. It's not all pleasant!

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.

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 would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.

'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

One is made by all the things around one. There are many things that have made one. For a writer to go around looking for things that have made him is asking for trouble. It's like giving a character to yourself. Can't do it. Can't do it. These things are just there. Is that enough?

However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

Everything in my life affects my writing. There are no separate parts of my life.

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.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

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 anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

I felt that with 'In A Perfect World' I was still kind of finding myself - not just as a musician, but also in love and in life.

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

An autobiography is a life story. It starts when you're born and continues until the end.

One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

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.