Quotes about Memoir Writing and Storytelling

“Memoirs are the backstairs of history.” 

–George Meredith

“Inside each of us is a natural-born storyteller, waiting to be released.” 

–Robin Moore

“Memories too often die with their owner, and time too often surprises us by running out.”

 –William Zinsser

“After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” 

–Philip Pullman

“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”

–J.M. Barrie

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” 

–Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

–William Faulkner

“Your life story is a gift, and it should be treated as such.” 

–Emily Gordon

“One of the saddest sentences I know is ‘I wish I had asked my mother about that.’ Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather.’” 

–William Zinsser 

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” 

–Lois Lowry

“What this book seeks is… To preserve the voice, the character, the personality, and the humanity of [the subject] in the amber of his own spoken words…” 

–Katherine Clark

“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” 

–Garrison Keillor 

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

–Soren Kierkegaard

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” 

–Graham Greene

“Tell the story of the mountain you climbed. Your words could become a page in some else’s survival guide." 

–Morgan Harper Nichols 

“I will say with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.” 

–Elie Wiesel

“The purpose of the storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

–Brandon Sanderson

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” 

–Sue Monk Kidd

“We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.”

–Jim Neil Smith

“Stories are memory aids, instruction manuals, and moral compasses.”

–Aleks Krotoski 

“Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does in his own words.”

–William Zinsser

“Tears are words that need to be written.”

–Paulo Coelho