#memoirs

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

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

— David Ben-Gurion

#believes #change #his #history #memoirs

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

I knew that I had to write my memoirs. ↗

— Jane Fonda

#i #knew #memoirs #write

I will leave no memoirs. ↗

— Comte de Lautreamont

#leave #memoirs #will

I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life. ↗

— Sally Ride

#haven #i #life #made #memoirs

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

— Gloria Swanson

#book #divorce #far #given #i

Brighton Beach does not look, smell, or sound like Russia. It's a parody of Russia at best, something as different from the real thing as a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Yes, they sell Russian food on Brighton Beach, and Russian books and videos, and Russian clothes, and there are Russian restaurants and Russian nightclubs, and everybody speaks Russian, but the Russianness of the place is so concentrated that it feels ridiculously exaggerated. Everything Russian on Brighton Beach is too Russian, far more Russian than in real Russia. This is what happens all over Brooklyn. From the Scandinavians of Bay Ridge to the Chinese of Sunset Park, Brooklyn's immigrants go to ridiculous extremes to re-create their homelands only to end up with a vulgar pastiche. ↗

— Lara Vapnyar

#brooklyn-was-mine #essays #memoirs #food

But I wondered if all this kissing was a bad habit with him and me. The thing we did with our mouths instead of talking. ↗

— Gabrielle Zevin

#memoirs-of-a-teenage-amnesiac #love

I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about -- the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you? ↗

— Arthur Golden

#change