This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
— Ellen Goodman
Words on paper confer a kind of immortality. Wouldn't all of us love to have a journal, a memoir, a letter, from those we have loved and lost? Shouldn't all of us leave a bit of that behind?
— Anna Quindlen
To be faithful to ourselves, we must keep our ancestors and posterity within reach and grasp of our thoughts and affections, living in the memory and retrospect of the past, and hoping with affection and care for those who are to come after us.
— Daniel Webster
You’ve nothing to give the world that anyone else can’t give except yourself.
— Quentin Crisp
Autobiography has the freedom to be anything it pleases: to invent, to elide, to begin where it wants and to end where it wants.
— P.N. Furbank
It might be said that each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative,’ and that this narrative is us, our identities.
— Oliver Sacks
What do you wish you knew about your grandfather or great-grandfather? Shouldn't you preserve that kind of information for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
—Terry Mullins
You can make yourself live forever through writing. Do not pass through life without leaving something behind for others to learn from your experiences—even if no one but your children read it. You may discover a you you've never known.
—Antwone Fisher
