John Boyne Quotes

In a series of wonderful essays, Evan Handler gives himself up to us - warts and all. To our amusement and bemusement we share in his emotional growth as he struggles to mature. I not only laughed along with him but felt that I too had grown a little along the way. Who could ask for more?

[Shwing] the really naked stuff I've dealt with in my own life, my own therapy and relationships - for me it just feels like a film I'm really proud of.

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.

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

I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there's always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'

In my new book, 'Binge,' I share essays about everything I've never told my viewers - touching on the best and worst days of my life, some hilarious, some embarrassing, but all extremely personal.

For people like me, who have blocked out a chunk of their past, you wonder - if you open that door, if you walk into that room of your memories, what will happen? Will it destroy you or will it make you stronger?

I write a lot about my experiences and the people I meet. I've got a lot of material. But a book about me? It seems sort of odd.

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.

The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

Only after I faced the unhappiness of my first marriage did I start on the path of personal growth.

For better and for worse, I feel like sorrow and grief are really transformative personal experiences for me, and I question what I would be had I decided to take a different path and not embrace that kind of pain.

A lot of times, I have personal things, things I go through that I may exaggerate or make a story around, but it always has a meaning related to something I've been through for real.

I write about personal experiences.

I'm pretty much a comic that dwells on what happened to me instead of what's happening to me.

Basically, when I did 'Infinity' in 1997, I had thoughts in my head that left me with a lot of questions. I've gone to certain personal limits with 'Infinity' that, at the end of it, I think, scared me. And I've made a lot of really kinda bad mistakes as a result of that.

The first 20 years had such a profound effect on me, I spent the next 20 dealing with them.

The thing you start noticing as books go by, is that you become aware not only of a shape of a career, but of your themes and interests. You don't want writing tricks where you make the same joke every time, but you do start to notice what consumes your mind, or what drives you.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.

A conscience is a troublesome thing at times. I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and I spent the time feeling what a nothing I was, and wishing I was so very different. Then the morning's post brought me a letter from a friend, saying I was so this, so that - it made me really cry, I was so grateful.

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.