Autobiographies Quotes

“If you want to turn a vision into reality, you have to give 100% and never stop believing in your dream.”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets Power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“[A]n old writer’s memory is the whore of his imagination. We all reinvent our pasts, I said, but writers are in a class of their own.”
― John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

“An Autobiography is the truest of all books,for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell (though I didn't use that figure)--the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.”
― Mark Twain

“Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I’m a bit of both.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“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

“There’s one more thing that happens as I listen to life stories. I realize I’m not just listening to other people’s stories; I’m helping them create their stories. Very few of us sit down one day and write out the story of our lives and then go out and recite it when somebody asks. For most of us it’s only when somebody asks us to tell a story about ourselves that we have to step back and organize the events and turn them into a coherent narrative. When you ask somebody to tell part of their story, you’re giving them an occasion to take that step back. You’re giving them an opportunity to construct an account of themselves and maybe see themselves in a new way. None of us can have an identity unless it is affirmed and acknowledged by others. So as you are telling me your story, you’re seeing the ways I affirm you and the ways I do not. You’re sensing the parts of the story that work and those that do not. If you feed me empty slogans about yourself, I withdraw. But if you stand more transparently before me, showing both your warts and your gifts, you feel my respectful and friendly gaze upon you, and that brings forth growth. In every life there is a pattern, a story line running through it all. We find that story when somebody gives an opportunity to tell it.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“We do not demand perfection in logic or absence of subjective thinking from any writer. We read about other people’s lives not because they possess the innate infallibility of judgment. We read other people’s life stories to understand the history of their peculiarities and partialities.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“...les hommes n'acceptent le changement que dans la nécessité et ils ne voient la nécessité que dans la crise. (Mémoires,éditions Fayard, 1976, p. 129)”
― Jean Monnet, Memoirs

“... les hommes n'acceptent le changement que dans la nécessité et ils ne voient la nécessité que dans la crise.
(Mémoires, Paris, éditions Fayard, 1976, p. 129)”
― Jean Monnet, Memoirs

“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

“Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Most biographies and autobiographies are each merely a slightly different packaging of the well-known fact that success rarely comes quickly or easily.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“De tous les écrits, je n'aime que ceux que l'on trace avec son propre sang.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra / Crépuscule des idoles / Ecce homo

“I don't have anything against autobiographies, so long as the writer has a penis that's twelve inches long when erect.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Secret of Evil

“I’m a member of the Silent Generation, and my story is about my determination, resilience, wisdom, hard work, and independence—all rooted in my cultural background and the times in which I have lived.”
― Felicita Churie, The Veiled Investment