Margery Allingham Quotes

I don't think my husband has any plans to pen his memoirs. There are enough people doing that for him.

I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.

Most people when they have autobiographies, they're not autobiographies, they're biographies written by a ghost writer.

Liza-don't let it make any difference. It won't, will it? With us, I mean." "Of course it won't," I told her. But I was wrong. Six months of not writing-that's a difference. And so I lied to Annie. On top of everything else, I lied to Annie, too.

We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.

Somebody said, "Well, you're going to write your definitive book about your life, biography." No, I'm not. I haven't done that. I wrote a book of letters which gives an insight into the real me as opposed to the public perceptions of me. But I'm convinced historians will figure out the things we got wrong and hopefully the things we got right.

She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.

I didn't lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.

With my own memoirs, they are truthful, and I write everything fully expecting to some day end up televised on Court TV, and I'm fully prepared to be challenged legally on it. Everything I write is the truth and I know that I would win.

Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.

...after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.

Sometimes we mask ourselves to further reveal ourselves, and it's always been connected to me with being a writer: We tell lies to tell a greater truth. The story is a mask; the characters you create are masks. That appeals to me. Aside from that, too, in the carnival the masks were beautiful, and offered a vision of Haitian creativity.

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).

A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers, giving them not only a faithful picture, but likewise human documents that may be relied upon.

You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.

A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely.

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.

The urge to write one's autobiography, so I have been told, overtakes everyone sooner or later.

I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.

I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I could sit still. If I could sit still, maybe I could read. Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don't they know it isn't true? Don't they know it's a lie, it's a God-damned lie? What do they have to tell about that for, when they know how it hurts?

To be honest, I don't know. I started one [book] back in 1982 or '83 when I first retired. But I was only 25 or 26 and not ready to write my memoirs.

I don’t see the point of truth anymore, it causes just as much heartbreak as lying.