Akhil Sharma
Akhil Sharma

I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir.

Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee

Paul Lisicky, in his new memoir, 'The Narrow Door,' describes losing his old friend, the novelist Denise Gess, and his husband, the acclaimed poet and memoirist Mark Doty, within a year of each other: Gess to cancer, at the age of 57, and Doty to another man.

Alexandra Fuller
Alexandra Fuller

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty.

Alexandra Fuller
Alexandra Fuller

For a memoir to really succeed, the author has to do such hard work before they come to the page. They have to do a brutal self-examination of everything they believe to be true.

Alexei Sayle
Alexei Sayle

For me, the showbiz memoir is uninteresting - you want to tell people something they don't know about.

Alice McDermott
Alice McDermott

The thing that fiction can do is look from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Even memoir leaves me somewhat frustrated. I think now we need a poet to uncover what isn't on the surface.

Alice McDermott
Alice McDermott

I'm not usually drawn to memoir - many run the risk of self-aggrandizement or score-settling.

Amanda Knox
Amanda Knox

I was told that my best-case scenario would likely consist of writing my memoir and then disappearing.

Amy Chozick
Amy Chozick

I read contrived memoirs by presidential candidates. For every 'Dreams From My Father' - Barack Obama's honest, literary portrayal of his biracial upbringing - there were a dozen cautious, formulaic vanity projects by politicians.

Chris Bohjalian
Chris Bohjalian

What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has the emotional resonance of memoir.