I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself.
Tara WestoverRead
I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Memoirs should focus on the essence of the story rather than excessive details that can overwhelm the narrative.
Tara Westover emphasizes that when writing memoirs, an abundance of details stemming from memory can obscure the main narrative. The quote suggests that effective storytelling requires distilling experiences to their core message, enabling readers to connect with the essence of the story rather than getting lost in minutiae.
Themes
MemoirStorytellingMemoryNarrativeWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing seminar, a participant reflects on Westover's insights about the importance of concise storytelling.
More from Tara Westover
All quotes βI had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring.
Tara WestoverRead
We think love is noble, and in some ways, it is. But in some ways, it isn't. Love is just love. And sometimes people do terrible things because of it.
Tara WestoverRead
I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.
Tara WestoverRead
Although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, our religion was not the same. I could stand with my family or with the gentiles... but there was no foothold in between.
Tara WestoverRead
We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.
Tara WestoverRead
Similar quotes
Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.
Karin SlaughterRead
When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.
Zadie SmithRead
The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
Nathaniel HawthorneRead
The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.
Jane SmileyRead
I write adult fiction, but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!
Jodi PicoultRead
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John SteinbeckRead