The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all. Patricia Hampl More Quotes by Patricia Hampl More Quotes From Patricia Hampl The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn. Patricia Hampl pride winter night Memoirists, unlike fiction writers, do not really want to 'tell a story.' They want to tell it all - the all of personal experience, of consciousness itself. That includes a story, but also the whole expanding universe of sensation and thought ... Memoirists wish to tell their mind. Not their story. Patricia Hampl expanding-universe wish mind People come and go in life, but they never leave your dreams. Once they're in your subconscious, they are immortal. Patricia Hampl immortal dream people Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be. Patricia Hampl taste writing book Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is. Patricia Hampl focus prayer attention The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor. Patricia Hampl splendor celebration art We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical. Patricia Hampl spiritual writing memories I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know. Patricia Hampl knows writing order True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world Patricia Hampl literature self world Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste. Patricia Hampl acquired-taste oneself taste Memory is, first, a captivating mystery. Patricia Hampl mystery memories firsts The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That's pilgrimage -- a mind full of journey. Patricia Hampl boredom real journey The golden light of metaphor, which is the intelligence of poetry, was implicit in alchemical study. To change, magically, one substance into another, more valuable one is the ancient function of metaphor, as it was of alchemy. Patricia Hampl golden substance light No memoirists writes for long without experiencing an unsettling disbelief about the reliability of memory, a hunch that memory is not, after all, just memory. Patricia Hampl writing memories long We do not, after all, simply have experience; we are entrusted with it. We must do something--make something--with it. A story, we sense is the only possible habitation for the burden of our witnessing. Patricia Hampl burden stories Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy. Patricia Hampl easy writing sometimes A careful first draft is a failed first draft Patricia Hampl careful firsts Writing was the soul of everything else ... Wanting to be a writer was wanting to be a person. Patricia Hampl persons soul writing Memoir is trustworthy and its truth assured when it seeks the relation of self to time, the piecing of the shards of personal experience into the starscape of history's night. The materials of memoir are humble, fugitive, a cottage knitting industry seeking narrative truth across the crevasse of time as autobiography folds itself into the vast, fluid essay that is history. A single voice singing its aria in a corner of the crowded world. Patricia Hampl knitting humble night What is remembered is what becomes reality. Patricia Hampl remembered reality
