Best Memoir Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“Put simply, when I realised I could build a wall that would last hundreds of years, men wanting to fuck me felt a little irrelevant.”

“His New Year’s resolution for 2000 was to focus on ways he could make every encounter with every person a positive experience.”

“Leaving my father behind—with all of his baggage—was like giving up an old teddy bear. You know it’s just an object, incapable of comforting you with its tattered fur and missing button eye, but it’s something you cling to, even though you know it can’t give anything back.”

“Explore, Experience, Then Push Beyond.”

“The teacher pulled out a pile of papers. They were Bennie’s tests and homework assignments. Mrs. Lewis said, “Ma’am, here is the proof that Bennie isn’t up to a fourth grade level. He has an F on several of these assignments. In fact, a zero grade is too high for some of Bennie’s work this last year.”

“What I have learned so far had been an incredible journey and adventure. I remained in my own character even when I was not well liked. I now enter a room looking for people I may like rather than for those who will like me. There are people who change their demeanor between regular people and professional people. Just try to be who you are consistently and let those closest to you see your best, along with those you work with. People around you should not be the cause of change in your personal character.”

“She has learned to love. To fear. To hate. And then to love again. Through it all, she writes.” ~Once Upon A Time There Was A Girl”

“You can make a difference in another person's life and not realize it, just by giving them One Moment of your time, One Memory to recall, One Motion that tells them they are not alone! OM!”

“Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils.”

“The features of character are carved out of adversity.”

“Somehow the idyllic existence I envisioned never quite came to pass, but aside from the occasional culinary disaster, my marriage wasn't bad.”

“I tell my students, who are concerned with the question of betrayal, that when it comes to memoir, there is no such thing as absolute truth—only the truth that is singularly their own. I say this not to release them from responsibility but to illuminate the subjectivity of our inner lives. One person's experience is not another's.”

“He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it”

“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”

“Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.”

“True friends don't come with conditions.”

“Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.”

“However, narrating what you remember, telling it to someone, does something else. The more a person recalls a memory, the more they change it. Each time they put it into language, it shifts. The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things. According to neuroscience. The safest memories are locked in the brains of people who can’t remember. Their memories remain the closest replica of actual events. Underwater. Forever.”

“Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.”

“It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.”

“From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.”

“When we enter this world, it is terribly raw and brutal and repugnant and of divine beauty. This is nature: cold as stone and splendid as the finest love. And I say to myself: This continues after death. This is still nature and things can happen which would make you aghast. For example, take a man who starts off as a young lad with very tender stirrings of the heart, but what has become of him after thirty or forty years? And Gott-fried Keller said the same of young girls, how innocent they looked and what then becomes of them later! One could say: They become this nature, they grow into it and become these devils that they precisely are also in eternal nature. And then the dead come into a different nature. They are born into it through death and assume the color and pitch of that nature. For “there” is also some sort of nature, it too is somehow of God.”

“I have gradually come to understand what every great philosophy until now has been: the confession of its author and a kind of involuntarily unconscious memoir.”

“Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.”

“In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.”

“In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.”

“You are putting yourself in serious danger...'”

“In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.”