“I don’t want to write the sort of memoir that slags people off and takes vengeance, I don’t admire writers who do that. It’s cheap, angry.”— Rose Tremain, theguardian.com
“Google 'How to Become a Writer' and you will get 360 million hits, and none of them will be useful.”— Harrison Scott Key, oxfordamerican.org
“Paradoxically, vividness of description and detail here comes at the expense of realism. To put it simply, no one besides a writer—a professional noticer—notices this much, and certainly not in a near instantaneous time frame; not in a “taking in.” There is no reason to. This style of writing, which…”— Adam O'Fallon Price, blog.pshares.org
“As with writing, the silence says as much, or more, than the word.”— Adam O'Fallon Price, blog.pshares.org
“Description is, in fact, more useful for what it says about the noticer than the noticed.”— Adam O'Fallon Price, blog.pshares.org
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”— Robert Louis Stevenson, amazon.com
“I think that book has helped so many of us stick to our guns and keep at it. That’s a book that was so empowering. He was so eloquent and incisive in that book. Here he is, larger-than-life Stephen King, and yet there he is across from you, telling you to chill out and work.”— Caroline Kepnes, ew.com
“I’m sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I’ve had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter and science populariser. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer — one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.”— Arthur C. Clarke, clarkefoundation.org
“What this means for the true novelist is that he or she must continue to soldier on, keep writing, keep trying, taking the increasingly painful hits of rejection after rejection until, well, until someone out there catches on…or doesn’t.”— Warren Adler, warrenadler.com
“What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.”— Beth Kephart, amazon.com
“Do you know, yet, what you're writing about? Do you know what is at stake?”— Beth Kephart, amazon.com
“One who writes memoir wishes to step into that light, not to see one's own face—that is not possible—but to feel the length of shadow cast by the night.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“If we learn not only to tell our stories but to listen to what our stories tell us—to write the first draft and then return for the second draft—we are doing the work of memory.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“For meaning is not "attached" to the detail by the memoirist; meaning is revealed.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“Seeking the congruence between stored image and hidden emotion—that's the real job of memoir.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com