A Quote by Annie Dillard

You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say, 'And then I did this and it was so interesting.

Annie Dillard

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Arm Did Drunk Hang Interesting Like Memoir Pains Reader Say Take Then

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Annie Dillard
American - Author
Born: April 30, 1945

Anyone who tries to write a memoir needs to keep in mind that what's interesting to you isn't necessarily interesting to a reader.

Mitch Albom

We left. We did not say: Don't drive, You're drunk. We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset. We did not say: We insist on going with you. We did not say: This can wait until tomorrow. Anything-everything-can wait.

John Green

I really just like characters who you don't know where they stand for a long while. It's like people. You hang out with them for 10 years, and then all of a sudden they do something, and you say, 'Who are you?' That's more interesting. In life and on-screen.

Oscar Isaac

What's great about symbols, what a writer can do with them is provide a really vivid, interesting image, and the reader will do the rest of the work. That's always been very interesting to me. Like if I just introduce the storks, I don't have to say what they mean because the reader will do that. And if I bring in the dark history of the region, other trends come up, for example how in ancient Egypt they are associated with the souls of the dead. You can surprise yourself by introducing an image and then see how developing the story fills it with meaning that is suddenly new.

Miroslav Penkov

I want you to take note, Commander, that turning in my badge would be like cutting off my arm. But if it comes down to a choice between the job and my marriage, then I lose the arm.

Nora Roberts

Do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.

Plato

I would be so mad if I saw something called a memoir, and then it was Mike Birbiglia. It would be so infuriating. It's like, 'Who is this guy, and why does he have a memoir?' David Letterman could write a memoir. Joan Rivers could. I'm just a nobody. I'm a comedian and a writer.

Mike Birbiglia

Working with somebody who has a more interesting life than I do - and getting to take on that life temporarily - is an endlessly interesting way to have the experience of writing memoir.

Hilary Liftin

You really burden the reader if you put things in but, "Oh, it's not interesting, but I'll put it in anyway." Then the reader's going to think, like, "Mmm... no thanks." So the thing is to cut all that stuff out before its published.

David Sedaris

I did a guest episode of 'Royal Pains,' and then right after that, 'Supergirl' happened, and I was like, 'How did I get here?' Every day, I walk on set, and I'm waiting for someone to be like, 'Ma'am, you can't be here.'

Nicole Maines

It was like reaching for someone's hand, then missing their fingers, or even their arm, and hitting their shoulder instead. But no matter. You hang on tight anyway.

Sarah Dessen

I don't think you can take a whole genre of very popular books and say, "This is all trash!" When we read a memoir that isn't by a celebrity, we feel like we're about to go on a journey and we don't know where the journey will lead. But when we read a memoir by a celebrity we feel like we already know the journey and we just want to travel it.

Hilary Liftin

My ideal relationship with the reader is that at certain points they will have said, 'I'm finding this quite tough, but I'm going to hang in there,' then at the end they will say, 'Oh God, I'm glad I hung on, it was so worth it.'

Sebastian Faulks

I would show my jobs to my mother, and she would always say the same thing: "That's nice dear". And then she would say: "Did you write it or did you do the drawing?" or "Did you take the pictures?" I'd always answer "no", then I realized the problem. My answer was then, "I made this happen". It's called design.

Brian Webb

A lot of my songs are very personal, always, but this one felt like a memoir. I almost called it Hallucinated Memoir. "Granny" is a hallucinated memoir. It's straight-up symbolism for my life, in many ways.

Vic Chesnutt

Yes, I see the Mobile Base System really is the shoulder of the arm. The arm is right there, like a human arm. It's really funny to look at the similarities between a human arm and the Canadian robotics arm.

Philippe Perrin

A Quote by Annie Dillard

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