Quotes About Memoirs

I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer.

Vladimir Zazubrin, in 1918 a deserter from the White forces and later a lively writer of fiction and memoirs, shot by Stalin in 1938 for his frankness, recalled the hard life of the Cheka executioners: White, grey carcasses (undressed people) collapsed onto the floor.

The material in this book was compiled from tape recordings, from the rich store of memory of J. B. West, and from his extensive personal files. To prepare for interviewing Mr. West, I read the following books, as a background on White House history. I am also grateful to James R. Ketchum, a true White House historian, for his assistance in research and preparation of the manuscript.

This interpretation became popular many decades later, after the publication of Solomon Volkov's supposed memoirs of Shostakovich, Testimony. In that book, Volkov has Shostakovich say, The Seventh Symphony had been planned before the war and consequently it simply cannot be seen as a reaction to Hitler's attack.

In the fam'd memoirs of a thousand years, Written by Crafticant, and published By Parpaglion and Co., (those sly compeers Who rak'd up ev'ry fact against the dead,) In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal's Head.

My only fantasy about writing was that in my old days, after directing many masterpieces, I would write my memoirs.

When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios.

Stalin didn't write any memoirs. He was too secretive. He was afraid people might read them.

I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book.

What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century

I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book. —Gloria Swanson

After all, memoirs are not open doors into another person's house. They are more like broken windows, with the owner trying to explain away all of the damage.

Whatever shall we do in that remote spot? Well, we will write our memoirs. Work is the scythe of time.

I would prefer to believe that things possess the power of recall, of recollection. That things are memoirs of the existences that once were theirs, if only we knew how to read them.

Someday he would write his memoirs, when his adventures had arranged themselves into a suitably attractive package.