Memoir Quotes

Sometimes writing is just rubbing words together long enough to make a fire.

~ Gillian Marchenko

There is an element of selfishness to this, I suppose. It feels pretty good to be able to so quickly help someone. That is, after all, one of the great emotional payoffs of medicine. That isn't to say that ECT is either a panacea or without flaws - but when used in the right way for the right purposes it's of great benefit, and condemning it because it isn't perfect would lead to more suffering and harm, no less.It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life. I have memory problems as a residual of it; however, I'm alive. That was the main point.

~ Kitty Dukakis

My words to Anna, as we stood contemplating the Scuola Grande di San Marco, moments before entering Venice Hospital, came true: 'With a façade like that, I could even accept having a deformed child.' I accepted Tito's cerebral palsy.I accepted it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I accepted it with delight. I accepted it with enthusiasm. I accepted it with love.

~ Diogo Mainardi

When Tito was born, I was writing my fifth novel. That was how I saw my future: living in Venice and jumping from novel to novel. Tito's birth changed all that.

~ Diogo Mainardi

[My father] was handsome and tanned and smelled wonderful, like a mix of the ocean and fresh-cut grass, except when he smoked his pipe, which also smelled wonderful, as how I thought wisdom must smell, when it curls about your head.

~ Carolyn Weber

There is an element of selfishness to this, I suppose. It feels pretty good to be able to so quickly help someone. That is, after all, one of the great emotional payoffs of medicine. That isn't to say that ECT is either a panacea or without flaws - but when used in the right way for the right purposes it's of great benefit, and condemning it because it isn't perfect would lead to more suffering and harm, no less.

~ Kitty Dukakis

Despite your delusions to the contrary, swingers, by and large, are a civilized lot. We come in all ages, shapes, sizes, nationalities, and ethnicities. We have differing beliefs, varying opinions, IQs, and senses of humor. We have families, friends, careers, hobbies, mortgages, and retirement plans. In short, we’re just like everyone else. We don’t strap on leather chaps and nipple clamps to go about our day. Wearing kinks on our sleeves like badges of honor isn’t our style. Truth be told, we don’t talk that much about our dalliances—-at least not to Vanilla folk. We’re not ashamed. We simply assume most of the world doesn’t get our way of life. And more times than not, we’re right.

~ Daniel Stern

When I’d RSVPed for tonight, I hadn’t expected to be the youngest by three-plus decades. To be honest, I hadn’t expected anything. I didn’t have the mental capacity. The excitement over my first house party overwhelmed me and kept my thoughts abuzz for threeweeks.Jim and Valerie suggested Harry and Jackie invite me. Understandably, Harry and Jackie were skeptical about bringing a single male into their close-knit group, but Valerie vouched for me, which persuaded Jackie. I leapt at the invitation—any single male would have—but now, learning about the most recent medications to assist smooth menopausal transition, I was seriously rethinking my decision.

~ Daniel Stern

I’m no expert, no natural-born talent, definitely no guru. As you’ll soon learn, only through a colossal experiment in trial and error did I reach the sexual summit. Although I own up to having worn a cape in a few intimate scenarios, I don’t possess supernatural powers of any kind. Perhaps my IQ is slightly above average, but Mensa isn’t busting down my door. If pressed to define myself, I’d say I’m Horatio Alger between the sheets: a self-made swinging single male. . . with a hefty dose of Buster Keaton mixed in.

~ Daniel Stern

I dozed, jolting occasionally at the driver's loud pronouncement of upcoming stops. At this early hour the bus hummed along quietly with few passengers, so the stops were infrequent. In the hazy surrealism of predawn, there really was not much to see--what I could make out was mainly countryside, though not what I would call quaint, and certainly no Shakespearean cottages or fairy folk peeping from the trees.

~ Carolyn Weber

After consciously enduring a twelve-inch knitting needle navigated into the unseen recesses of my pelvis and almost passing out at the sensation of my hip inflating with fluid and somehow clinging to my sanity through the hour-long, migraine-inducing blare of the imaging contraption, which resembled a compact wind tunnel, possessed the amplification capability of a Marshall stack, and pushed my patience beyond the limits of superhuman endurance, I wasinformed by my orthopedist that the image of my still-smoldering hip had revealed, and I quote, “just a little inflammation.” In the world of orthopedic medicine, “a little inflammation” apparently qualifies as sound diagnosis.

~ Daniel Stern

How long you guys been renovating?” Craig asked Arianna.“About a month.”“How much longer?”Arianna sighed. “The contractor messed up the counters, so who knows.”“Preaching to the choir.”“Yeah?”“Oh, yeah. But in the end everything turned out for the best.”“How so?”“Well, for one, I switched from laminate to granite.”“Granite . . .” She exhaled, confounded, as if the granite countertop quandary was the most perplexing philosophical question of all time. “Yeah . . .We’re torn.”“More expensive, but aesthetically superior,” Craig lobbied. “Also retains value longer.”Knowing the sexual perversity about to transpire, I couldn’t reconcile that I was suddenly in an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Granted, I didn’t know from normal pre–group sex discussion topics, but I was pretty sure home improvement wasn’t on the list.

~ Daniel Stern

I didn’t make choices based on what I liked or didn’t like. I simply accepted what they chose for me. My role had always been to react and adapt to what was decided by other people, by outside circumstances, or in my mind, by God. My voice went unheard in my own life.

~ Jonna Ivin

The selection process is simple. Hubby exhausts every ploy in his psychological arsenal to filter out the liars, fakes, and undesirables. (If only every husband were so devoted . . .) Me, I try to prove to that I’m not the stereotypical single male. That I’m in the Lifestyle for the right reasons. That I’m courteous and respectful. All of which are true, but the burden of proof is onme. It always is.

~ Daniel Stern

Wilds whisper, yet I long for their roar.

~ Gin Getz

His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

~ Augusten Burroughs

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

~ Augusten Burroughs

Truth: last week I online shopped too much. Then I ate 2 pounds of jelly beans to feel better about that. In fact, while I was trying to read soul-nourishing things all I could think about was shopping and jellybeans. Points to the monkey mind.

~ Anna White

I guess this means we're uck-fayed, don't it Mikee?

~ Michael Jay

.. And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.

~ Cheryl Strayed

Fortunately the Omanis are generally very friendly and in no time at all, I had a knight in shining white dishdasha offering to help me.

~ Charlotte Smith

The selection process is simple. Hubby exhausts every ploy in his psychological arsenal to filter out the liars, fakes, and undesirables. (If only every husband were so devoted . . .) Me, I try to prove that I’m not the stereotypical single male. That I’m in the Lifestyle for the right reasons. That I’m courteous and respectful. All of which are true, but the burden of proof is onme. It always is.

~ Daniel Stern

See, far above arrogance and selfishness on the rankings of undesirable Lifestyle traits, topping the lengthy list of carnal sins, occupying its very own stratosphere of unforgivablereprehensibility, is lying. Without question, fibbing is the fastest way to secure a one-way trip to blackball status in the swing community. So assured is a liar’s exile from the Lifestyle that should a perjurer come clean about a material untruth and still secure playtime, that individual will have rewritten the entire swing rulebook. And no matter how enticing it may be to rewrite history, I do not recommend attempting it. Not unless you’re lusting after a celibate existence.

~ Daniel Stern

I’ve written for those who want to learn, truly learn, about a community with which they aren’t familiar. Or for those who have preconceptions but can admit they may not be entirely accurate (and, in some cases, that they are completely wrong). This means my reader must possess an open mind and a certain level of curiosity. If that’s you, proceed to checkout. An uncensored glimpse behind the curtain, hairy backs and all, awaits.

~ Daniel Stern

Every day is a new beginning, the building of a habit. Every action is a step in some direction. There is no pause in living.

~ Anna White

FROM a six-year-old: Told by a well-meaning friend, ‘Alex, do you know what the one thing is that the more you give, the more you get back? It’s love, Alex.’To which Alex asked, ‘What about pain?

~ Susan Hamilton

If variety is the spice of life, then my life must be one of the spiciest you ever heard of. A curry of a life. -Paul Child

~ Julia Child

ceremony is essential to humans: It's a circle that we draw around important events to separate the momentous from the ordinary. And ritual is a sort of magical safety harness that guides us from one stage of our lives into the next, making sure we don't stumble or lose ourselves along the way. Ceremony and ritual march us carefully right through the center of our deepest fears about change…

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

...The more I learned the more I realized how very much one has to know before one is in-the-know at all.

~ Julia Child

Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family's history.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means 'two,' and the word zweifel, which means 'doubt' - suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The Buddha taught that most problems - if only you give them enough time and space - will eventually wear themselves out.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

And some people have less star appeal than others, but sometimes they shine far brighter than those with more.

~ Mickey Leigh

I discovered that when one follows the artist's eye one sees unexpected treasures in so many seemingly ordinary scenes.

~ Julia Child

All too often, those of us who choose to remain childless are accused of being somehow unwomanly or unnatural or selfish, but history teaches us that there have always been women who went through life without having babies.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

From the moment I was first pregnant, and those around me insisted that treats such as cold cuts and nail polish could cut my unborn child's potential IQ in half, I got into the habit of NOT seeking out the little things that brought me joy. Like soft cheese. And getting too close to a Starbucks.Then my son came, and I was too busy crying while searching for his User Manual to consider a manicure or massage.I lasted about a week as a new mom before reaching out to others in my situation online. As exhausted, cranky, and confused as I was, I needed friends. It didn't take long for this gaggle of desperate, sleepless women to meet up in person...

~ Kim Bongiorno

The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning, and the same ending.

~ Martin Amis

Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the Wait-a-Minute Moment - that pivotal instant when girls from traditional cultures start pondering what's in it for them, exactly, to be getting married at the age of thirteen and starting to have babies not long after. They start wondering if they might prefer to make different choices for themselves, or any choices, for that matter. Once girls from closed societies start thinking such thoughts, all hell breaks loose.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The world is full of broken people who think they are surrounded by whole people.

~ Greg Garrett

I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of these big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert