“When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.”— Anthony Kiedis, amazon.com
“For the reader, a work of art can make a kind of mantra: by giving form to devastation, the poem rescues the reader from a darkness without shape or gravity; it is an island in a free fall; it becomes his companion in grief, his rescuer, a proof that suffering can be made somehow to yield meaning.”— Louise Glück, amazon.com
“Writers are vacuum cleaners who suck up other people's lives and weave them into stories like a sparrow builds a nest from scraps.”— Garrison Keillor, 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
“My narrative self (the culprit who invented) wishes to be discovered by my reflective self, the self who wants to understand and make sense of half-remembered moment.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“Memory seeks a permanent home for feeling and image, a habitation where they can live together.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“Intimacy with a piece of writing, as with a person, comes from paying attention to the revelations it is capable of giving, not by imposing my own notions and agenda, no matter how well intentioned they might be.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com
“The experience was simply there, like a book that has always been on the shelf, whether I ever read it or not, the binding and the title showing as I skim across the contents of my life.”— Patricia Hampl, amazon.com