Darin Strauss Quotes

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.

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

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

A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.

I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.

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).

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'

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

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

I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.

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

I hope I didn't bore you too much with my life story.

The stories that I want to tell are completely, well, somewhat autobiographical. It's completely based on my own self-absorption issues and problems.

We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves.

I've always liked the idea of memoirs, going into someone else's life, going through someone else's day and getting out of your own head.

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.

It's kind of hard to tell your life story and state all facts and it still be sweet.

Anytime you're sitting there writing a book about yourself, it's a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess.

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.

The world is a reflection of who we are and if we don't like the reflection, it doesn't really help to break the mirror.

This may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing.

I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude.