#memoirs

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was. ↗

— Arthur Golden

#love #memoirs #woman #love

In terms of size, mammals are an anomaly, as the vast majority of the world's existing species are snail-sized or smaller. It's almost as if, regardless of your kingdom, the smaller your size & the earlier your place on the tree of life, the more critical is your niche on Earth: snails & worms create soil, & blue-green algae create oxygen; mammals seem comparatively dispensable, the result of the random path of evolution over a luxurious amount of time. ↗

— Elisabeth Tova Bailey

#natural-history #non-fiction #life

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#contrarianism #dissent #dissidents #free-thought #harold-rosenberg

Aw honey. Today's as important as forever." Grandpa Joe in "Shave and a Haircut" Flash Warden and Other Stories ↗

— Eileen Granfors

#family-relationships #flash-fiction #hint-fiction #six-word-memoirs #women

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs. ↗

— David Ben-Gurion

#believes #change #his #history #memoirs

Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction. ↗

— Frank Harris

#form #memoirs #well-known

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led. ↗

— Giacomo Casanova

#any #away #been #before #called

In the writing of memoirs, as in the production of shows, too much caution causes the audience to nod and think of other channels. ↗

— Gerald Clarke

#causes #caution #channels #memoirs #much

A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving. I hope mine is interesting and self-serving. ↗

— William J. Clinton

#hope #i #interesting #lot #memoirs

I knew that I had to write my memoirs. ↗

— Jane Fonda

#i #knew #memoirs #write