Tag Archives: autobiography
You Watch What I Tell You
Excerpted from The Seventh Child: A Lucky Life by Freddie Mae Baxter, edited by Gloria Bley Miller, ©1999: My mother was only forty-nine years old when she died. She wasn’t sick before she died– like you say somebody was sick a long time– unless she was hiding it. She wasn’t in bed where you had …
Of Course
“I wanted to write so that I would have something interesting to read, for while everything I read was quite good, some of it wonderful, I believed that I would write better, and so of course it turned out to be.” ~William Saroyan There are people in this world who suffer from low self-esteem. William …
Just Sitting and Being Alive
Excerpted from The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the autobiography of William Saroyan, © 1952: Water to an Armenian is a holy thing, like fire. A farmer watering his plants, trees, or vines is taking part in a rite which has profound meaning and satisfaction for him. The farmers of Fresno went to the headgates …
The anxiety and fear that was plainly showing
In this excerpt from his memoir The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, William Saroyan relates a memory of his mother’s from when his family crossed the Atlantic to America, c. 1888: My mother also remembered an Assyrian woman on the boat from Havre to New York, in steerage. This woman helped my mother take care …
But He Is Also
Excerpted from The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the autobiography of Armenian writer William Saroyan, © 1952: It is necessary to remember and necessary to forget, but it is better for a writer to remember. It is necessary for him to live purposely, which is to say to live and to remember having done so. …
Morning Has Broken
Excerpted from The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the autobiography of William Saroyan, © 1952: Morning is best when it begins with the last hours of night. For years I have known midday mornings. There is something to be said for them. There is a quality of confusion and overlapping in them which is sometimes …
The Pinnacle of Evolution
“Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to the now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by …
We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions…
Excerpted from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L’Amour ©1989: Acquiring an education has many aspects, of which school is only one, and the present approach is, I believe, the wrong one. Without claiming to have all the answers, I can only express my feeling that our methods of instruction do much …
An Incomplete Education
“Unfortunately, in most of our schools the history of Europe and North America is taught as if it were the history of the world. The rest of the world is referred to only when Europeans or Americans were invading or trading. There has recently been a small change for the better but not nearly enough.” …
Time
“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men and women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.” ~from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L’Amour ©1989 Paul Laurence …
No Limit
“It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” …
“He just didn’t know any other way.”
Steve Parish was a roadie for the Grateful Dead and manager for the Jerry Garcia Band. His 2003 autobiography, Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road With the Grateful Dead, is about his own life and experiences. It’s not a tell-all by any means, but of course his story overlaps with theirs. His stories …
