Memoirs Quotes

“Pomposity plans your eviction just as your derriere is settling on to the finest of cushions.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“Never wait for a woman to show interest. It is not her interest we seek, but her desire,” whispered Casanova. “Intrigue her, tantalize her, flatter her and let her know that she is the only one in the room that you truly want. Women want to be admired and desired above all others. Even if they refuse you, they will never forget you.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“Personal essay writing, dialectic discourse with the self, is a process of taking ideas and crushing them like grapes to create a homemade wine.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“…they looked about as careful and as discreet as a troupe of Visigoths at an afternoon tea party.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“My English teacher told me in high school I would never amount to anything. At least I would never go to university. Just to be spiteful I graduated from U.BC. with a B.G.S. degree in 1992.”
― Robert Kakakaway, Thou Shalt Not Be An Indian

“Memories appear in flashes of light, in short scenes, in reflections that can make us laugh or bring us to tears.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir

“Even so, the advance of the far right in Europe and the United States reveals the need to rethink memory work, to adapt it to new generations for whom the Second World War feels like a long-ago crisis. It's important to tell a story people can identify with, a story of ordinary people, the Mitlaufer, and not only of heroes, victims, or monsters. To raise awareness that, if history as such does not repeat itself, sociological and psychological mechanisms do, which push individuals and societies to make irrational choices by supporting regimes and leaders who are opposed to their interests, by becoming complicit in criminal ideas and actions. The most dangerous monster is not a megalomaniacal and violent leader, but us, the people who make him possible, who give him the power to lead. By our opportunism, by our conformity to all-powerful capitalism, which places money and consumption over education, intelligence, and culture, we are in danger of losing the democracy, peace, and freedom that so many of our predecessors have fought to preserve.”
― Géraldine Schwarz, Those Who Forget: My Family's Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning

“Stand to attention, soldier"
My grandfather's gentle voice spoke.
I saluted him as I had been shown.
"At ease," he spoke again.
Then he pinned his medals to my shirt
One by one, those shining disks
Almost holy to me
The proof of what I knew
He was my hero”
― David Hayes, What Has He Done Now?: Tales from a North West Childhood in the 60s and Early 70s

“Certain of a far deeper story of existence that poetically reveals priorities and values and truth, I knew this was the sweet spot for inspired decision-making. -- Daisy A. Hickman”
― Daisy A. Hickman, A Happy Truth: Last Dogs Aren't Always Last

“Our scars make us who we are: let's wear them proudly and throw this shame aside because it was never ours to bear'

"Tell me you're sorry, Daddy" (P:187)”
― caryn walker, Tell Me You're Sorry, Daddy

“Where this living death doesn't exist, life takes its place. Just as the person who loses his shadow becomes the shadow of himself.
('The shadow of himself - that would be a fine title. With the subtitle: 'Memoirs of a double life'.)”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re- create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long
been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time;
resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context. I enter into the archive that domestic abuse between partners who share a gender identity is both possible and not uncommon, and that it can look something like this. I speak into the silence. I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“You can spend a lifetime at sea. Your present and past surround you as sure as the salt air. One does not stare out to the horizon and eventually not see themselves staring back. The farther we go out to sea, the deeper we go inside our mind. The spirit of the ocean is a living, breathing thing, as alive as any of the creatures who inhabit her waters above and below.”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

“When one looks at the horizon above any body of water for long enough, they often find self-reflection in the distance.”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

“The Ethiopian famine of 1984-1985 was an event that caused a robust response from a multitude of people in the world community.”
― Byron Conner, The Face of Hunger: Reflections on a Famine in Ethiopia

“Art, mythology, religion, philosophy, history, anthropology, science, and medicine along with literature, autobiographies, biographies, essays, memoirs, poetry, and other works of fiction and nonfiction serve as a vast library for us to scour in search of the hidden keys to attaining knowledge and happiness. We glimpse individual revelation along with selective rays of radiance from every person’s conscientious act of documenting their long-term commitment to achieving a gleaming living testament to enlightenment.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“When confronting their distorted way of living, personal essayists must inevitably deal with the horrors of the solipsistic self. Essayists remind us to be astutely aware that life is what occurs before death, and because life is the only truth that we will ever experience, we might as well attempt to get our arms around it and embrace it with all our might. In contrast to the essayist’s desire to make clear-cut distinctions, poetry is an airy art form that makes ample use of metaphors and allusions.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster

“I urged myself to live in a state of complete consciousness, even when that meant pain or boredom." - Pete Hamill.”
― Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life

“Aloneness allows time for deliberating and intellectual studies, but ultimately every person must share their knowledge of life if they want to remain a vibrant memory after their death.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person of average intelligence is capable of learning useful life lessons through the act of self-examination.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“As I walked through the fog, back into the future, I made a list of everything I wanted to bring back with me: the heartbreaking indigo of a Greengage night sky, the sugared almonds I'd eaten in the dining hall, the hawing sound Fancy made when she laughed, the smells of freshly cut clover, sponge cake, and loam, Martha's steady gaze, the swish of my borrowed skirt.”
― Melanie Gideon, Valley of the Moon

“If you ask me about the interests of care leavers, I will answer by saying; pay close attention to them. They need more than food and clothing, they need mentors and helpers”
― Deborah Dzifah Tamakloe, Beyond the Orphanage: A Journey of Hope and Aspirations

“The truth about a man as much as about a country or an institution is better than legend,
myth and falsehood.”
― Aga Khan, The Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time

“What the house kept us, we kept. The buttonhooks, the cotton gin advertisement, the letters, the filthy lady's glove, gnarled and frozen in a claw, all of it were framed under glass, in shadow boxes, displayed in the parlor by the guest book. We even managed to save the silvery gilt of wallpaper and the peacock frieze we found like a gift under the brown and orange daisy paper in the hallway. Lost objects in a house are like memories tucked in the gray folds of our brains. They will resurface. Eventually, they will come back.”
― Mindy Friddle, The Garden Angel

“One day I'm going to use this experience in my memoirs [...]. Is when a famous person writes about their life and describes the bad stuff they went through. It's important to have enough bad stuff or it just seems like bragging, and no one likes that. So messing up today that's really helpful, because is shows that I'm human.”
― John August, Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire

“A lifetime of hard work developed a deceptive amount of strength and power in her. She clearly had hidden muscles. Her dock lines creaked and moaned like that of the reins of a horse trying to sprint but forced to trot. She anxiously chomped upon them, growing ever more restless with the change in the tide. She could see the open pasture from the fuel dock and feel the ocean pulsing through her as the south swell churned the harbor”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

“The reality is that nightclubs are nothing more than a sea of lost souls searching for something that cannot possibly be found within their confines. We go to these places for we lack other direction, momentarily appeased by distracting sounds, flashing lights, and the prospect of pleasures of the flesh. Again and again, we confuse these stimulants for something worthy of our time. We drink in these places to pretend like we aren’t individually awkward, an irony we all share.”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

“The sea can gauge your mood better than a thermometer can gauge your temperature. The sea is a teacher and a doctor. She gives you what she believes you deserve in dosages, prescribed by her liking. What you believe you need for your ailment may be exactly the opposite of what she believes you need. You may believe a slam job trip will fix your problems, yet she may believe a broker is more important to the lesson you are supposed to learn. You’ll find no better therapy when both the patient and doctor are on the same page. I was hopeful we both agreed that a slammer was in order.”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

“At sea, the darker the night the closer you will get to your past. The music you decide to play is the radio dial of your history. Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately” played as I stared at the setting moon. This is a song that always transports me to a New Hampshire backroad of my youth. Her name was Katie. She was tall, blond, and wore the girl next door look like an angel. She was smart, funny, and kind. She infatuated me from the moment I met her at Wentworth Marina. She was the daughter of two well-to-do doctors from upstate New York. It was her plan to sail around the world, and she wanted me to join her. “Just to mate” she would always say with a wink.
She told me, “Pull over, pull over. I love this song. We have to dance.” So I found myself with goosebumps despite dancing in

the warmth of the summer air. The sky around us filled with the flashing luminance of fireflies, and it seemed like we were dancing in the heavens above. You could almost touch the music as it drifted out of my truck windows. I will never forget the look in those crystal-blue eyes as we danced to that song alongside my Dodge Ram pickup. Little did I know it would be the last night I would ever get to look into them again.”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water

“Though her voice silent, as she leaped from the sea, she appeared to roar like a lion from a cavernous void that was her mouth”
― Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water