I define success as being the best, authentic me that I can be.

The entire partying lifestyle was superficial in my experience, and most of my friendships were as deep as a shot glass and as short-lived as a pack of cigarettes.

I always felt awkward and unfinished, unworthy of love, suspicious of affection offered. My mother’s absence became a great presence in my life.

In any case, it’s the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!

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

There is a place for what my heart tells me about you, and there is no shame or guilt in it. God Himself is free to look in my heart right this instant and I...

I was always an odd child, though I had no idea what odd was, really.

It is not a crime to commit First Degree Writing

These secrets are not secrets per se but are truths hidden from public view. I had to write this book. There had to be a reason I survived to tell this story.

She would (if she could) put her arm around the girl she’d been and try to tell her Take it easy, but the girl would not have listened. The girl had no receptors for Take...

I’ve always let my imagination run free, but now I try to rein it in. Things never turn out the way I imagine, so I am letting them rest. Instead, I am holding just what...

Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain...

The interior life expands and fills; it approaches the edge of skin; it thickens with its own vivid story; it even begins to hear rumors, from beyond the horizon skin’s rim, of nations and wars....

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

The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break for darling, the times are quite glorious.I left him by the water’s edge,still...

Wilds whisper, yet I long for their roar.

Damoder climbed slowly to his feet. ‘Buy lot!’ he wheedled, ‘I am poor man. I sell you cheap. I am bank-Rupert! Apparently the only things that could save him from bank-rupertcy were our dollars.

A couple hours went by, and the storm began to turn back to the sea. The dark clouds rolled away, leaving white, fluffy ones in their place. We were safe, and the rock in the...

I avoided one-on-one situations, eye contact, and healthy relationships. Instead I took refuge in drinking too much, cheap sex, and sarcasm.

Sherry Carroll is a real life Penny Lane and one wonders if she hasn’t got Cameron Crowe or Lester Bangs hidden somewhere in her suburban basement.

Saya awam soal mendaki gunung, tapi itu bukan berarti tidak bisa dilakukan.

It is a fundamental misperception,” Fouts says to me, “to think human life has more value than any other life form.

And I was cooking for three, and teaching, and taking care of a man who’d just collapsed in my house; learning to cook like June Cleaver didn’t exactly seem an option.

Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.

He tilted my chin up and I swear those lips are magic. Witchcraft. Sorcery. Whatever it is in those lips, it’s addictive. Unassailable. I had to have more. More of this feeling of being wanted.

Listen: I don’t have anything against autobiographies, so long as the writer has a penis that’s twelve inches long when erect. So long as the writer is a woman who was once a whore and...

Pen and paper have been my life, now they may herald my death. But I asked for these, the traditional tools of my trade, and to my surprise my request has been granted.

Be good, or good at it.

There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own...

Membaca autobiografi atau memoir seolah-olah terlibat dalam dialog dengan narator yang menjadi jurucakap pengarang: mendengar secara langsung cerita serta pendapat tentang zamannya dengan gaya pengucapan peribadinya. Gaya bahasa dan idiosinkrasi penampilannya menghantar karyanya mirip cereka,...

I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood...

The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, “Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to...

First memory: a man at the back door is saying, I have real bad news, sweat is dripping off his face, Garbert’s been shot, noise from my mother, I run to her room behind her,...

Some flowers need flames to find their way into this world.

Families that feel together, heal together.

Even though we all know something,There is a lot more to it.

When I first met Billy I thought about sucking his eyes right out of their sockets. They’re like turquoise gum drops.

It was too much happiness. Happiness puts you at too much risk – what if you were to lose it? Too much happiness is a paradox. It’s a tragedy, even: getting something you’ve always wanted...

Whether or not you employ humor in dealing with difficult subjects, the tone of the writing is of the utmost importance. Personally, I can read about almost any subject if I feel a basic trust...

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

This body needs me to say yes to it, just as it is right now. No more singing that same old jingle of body-shame and dieter’s promised lands.

If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love...

We had never eaten our own chickens but we delighted in eating their eggs. No matter how hot the summer became, they always presented us with eggs, which I thought was very generous of them,...

Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it’s because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and...

He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty.

I believe God lets us stumble along, slowly finding our way, and giving us chances to pick each other up.

Being broken isn’t the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our...

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is...

As well as writing, 2004 saw my first attempt at wine making: the elixir of life. Unfortunately, my effort tasted more like the elixir of death.

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...