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Memoirs Quotes

Browse 142 quotes about Memoirs.

Memoirs Quotes

“When confronting their distorted way of living, personal essayists must inevitably deal with the horrors of the solipsistic self. Essayists remind us to be astutely aware that life is what occurs before death, and because life is the only truth that we will ever experience, we might as well attempt to get our arms around it and embrace it with all our might. In contrast to the essayist’s desire to make clear-cut distinctions, poetry is an airy art form that makes ample use of metaphors and allusions.”

Memoir WritingMemoirsWriting MemoirPersonal EssaysEssayistSolipsismSolipsisticSolipsistic Self
Author:Kilroy J. Oldster
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“You can spend a lifetime at sea. Your present and past surround you as sure as the salt air. One does not stare out to the horizon and eventually not see themselves staring back. The farther we go out to sea, the deeper we go inside our mind. The spirit of the ocean is a living, breathing thing, as alive as any of the creatures who inhabit her waters above and below.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“We got to the casino and ordered some drinks. We then walked around, drinking and losing. We had some drinks at the craps table and lost money there. We had some drinks at the slot machines and lost a little more over there. Our drinking and money lasted longer at the blackjack tables, but even there our drinks and winning streak dried up. The more we drank, the flirtier we became. Although I was hemorrhaging money like crazy, I was the luckiest guy in the casino.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“At night, fishermen are paid for their hard work with one of the Pacific’s greatest views—the gates to the heavens above. Hawaii’s remoteness to the rest of the world leaves the skies unpolluted by man’s industrial byproducts and artificial light known on the mainland. A man can actually look back in time when he gets far enough away from the shores of Hawaii and leaves modern society behind. He will find a sky above him before the hustle and bustle of mankind, a place where a stunning display of rhythmically twinkling stars are the norm and planets lay boldly pronounced. Shooting stars are commonplace and so is the humbling feeling a man gets when looking at this masterpiece before him. The boat churns up neon-green phosphoresce that glows in the water below like fireflies. When the ocean is calm enough and the moon dark enough, it is completely impossible to tell where the earth ends and where the heavens begin.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Fishermen don’t play to fold. They will always play the bluff no matter how hard things get. We throw the dice no matter how broke or how leveraged we may be. Like any true gambler, we know the dice will eventually get hot again if we throw them hard enough. It’s just a matter of surviving long enough to throw them enough times to find a winning streak”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I followed all the advice my mind could compute and digested it to the best of my ability. I’d run, work out, eat healthy, and then swallow a fifth of whiskey. The man cave below my home began to look like a recycling center for Crown Royal and Jack Daniels distilleries. I discovered that empty whiskey bottles made an eerily satisfying thud when stacked up like cordwood. The sturdy glass was much thicker and stronger than my own skin, and I admired their resilience to outside forces.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I had a lot of losing in my life lately, but this would be a loss that I just couldn’t bear. The world is full of women—I had a chance to survive that. But a fish of this caliber was truly something special. I have seen a lot of women in my life, and none of them have ever had me yelling at the top of my lungs in excitement at first glance. Wonder women are rare, wonder fish are twice as rare. This fact was not lost on me.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“The sea may be your lover, but she is not your friend. You cannot safely turn your back to her. Her loyalty is that of an ex- wife, her characteristics more of a new mistress; she will bring you to your highest peaks, but beware for on the other side of the high ground lie valleys of unspeakable misery. Her mind games are second to none. She will lead you down darker alleys of your mind than you ever knew existed within. She will make you question all that you are.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Paint thinner is the boatyard’s morning dew. The stringent smell awakens the mind of a sailor as spring flowers awaken the mind of a poet. The boatyard, a reflection of your life, reminds us that the least desirable jobs often prove to be the most important and fulfilling. The harder the task, the more one feels rewarded when accomplishing it. Paint erratically splatters on skin in the same fashion that the stars come to fill up the night sky, the constellations on your forearms telling of the most recent project.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“A lifetime of hard work developed a deceptive amount of strength and power in her. She clearly had hidden muscles. Her dock lines creaked and moaned like that of the reins of a horse trying to sprint but forced to trot. She anxiously chomped upon them, growing ever more restless with the change in the tide. She could see the open pasture from the fuel dock and feel the ocean pulsing through her as the south swell churned the harbor”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“The reality is that nightclubs are nothing more than a sea of lost souls searching for something that cannot possibly be found within their confines. We go to these places for we lack other direction, momentarily appeased by distracting sounds, flashing lights, and the prospect of pleasures of the flesh. Again and again, we confuse these stimulants for something worthy of our time. We drink in these places to pretend like we aren’t individually awkward, an irony we all share.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“The sea can gauge your mood better than a thermometer can gauge your temperature. The sea is a teacher and a doctor. She gives you what she believes you deserve in dosages, prescribed by her liking. What you believe you need for your ailment may be exactly the opposite of what she believes you need. You may believe a slam job trip will fix your problems, yet she may believe a broker is more important to the lesson you are supposed to learn. You’ll find no better therapy when both the patient and doctor are on the same page. I was hopeful we both agreed that a slammer was in order.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“At sea, the darker the night the closer you will get to your past. The music you decide to play is the radio dial of your history. Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately” played as I stared at the setting moon. This is a song that always transports me to a New Hampshire backroad of my youth. Her name was Katie. She was tall, blond, and wore the girl next door look like an angel. She was smart, funny, and kind. She infatuated me from the moment I met her at Wentworth Marina. She was the daughter of two well-to-do doctors from upstate New York. It was her plan to sail around the world, and she wanted me to join her. “Just to mate” she would always say with a wink. She told me, “Pull over, pull over. I love this song. We have to dance.” So I found myself with goosebumps despite dancing in the warmth of the summer air. The sky around us filled with the flashing luminance of fireflies, and it seemed like we were dancing in the heavens above. You could almost touch the music as it drifted out of my truck windows. I will never forget the look in those crystal-blue eyes as we danced to that song alongside my Dodge Ram pickup. Little did I know it would be the last night I would ever get to look into them again.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Unbelievably, the whales continued to circle me. Eventually, I was even able to run my hands down Mama’s back several times. Her black skin felt much tougher and tired. Remnants of barnacles made her skin rough in patches. She seemed more hesitant of this human. Perhaps she had firsthand evidence of man’s horrible actions and treachery. I didn’t blame her for her concerns. I had come to trust fewer and fewer humans myself. Her giant eyes possessed wisdom only found in the passage of time and miles traveled on long journeys.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Loved ones will beg you to stay home but in the same breath refuse to stop mentioning how much money they need. They want you around more but want the all-mighty dollar just as much. So, though you may long for your warm bed at home, you know it will be freezing cold if you don’t come home with money independent of how many blankets you pile upon yourself. Just because fish were worthless this month doesn’t mean the mortgage or price of groceries was adjusted to reflect how terrible the auction was.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I lay in the rain as it made intricate rivers that flowed off my nose and along the peaks and valleys of my face. I could almost feel memories encapsulated in the different streams. Water pooled in the leeward side of my mouth after cascading across the rapids of my front teeth. In the previous hours, my jaw and mouth went limp from their newfound home on the ground. They now served for little more than a shitty birdbath. I wished the water would drown me.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I was cursed with the inability to ever sleep in late, a habit inherited from years of working on fishing boats. Being drunk and/or being hungover has never been nor ever will be an acceptable reason for not being at work and doing your job on time. In some sick way, there’s even a sense of pride from being able to party all night and work all day. Throughout my entire career, I and others alike in the industry were praised for this attribute. A talent that I often secretly wore like a scarlet letter of shame, I was blessed with an extremely high tolerance for alcohol, particularly whiskey. The problem with this is that it got me into a lot of shitty situations. I often found myself in questionable locations, with even more questionable company, doing even more questionable activities. It was a direct portal to a darkness that had haunted me since my teenage years.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“At sea, I was the captain. I was important, and I had a role. I ran the show. At home, I was the swab. I did the shit work, almost always unappreciated. I loved my family, but man did I hate being on land all the time. I tried my best, I honestly did. I really stepped up my game around the house to be the best dad and partner I could be. It just was never good enough. With no offshore fishing and encouragement at home, part of me was dead inside, the part that made me who I am. I missed my boat daily. Flashbacks were a constant. I daydreamed of foaming schools of tuna while washing bubbly dishes. I saw mahi mahi boldly charging baits as I folded brightly colored laundry. When I went jogging and my heart started pumping, I saw huge marlin going wild on the gaffs. Everything reminded me of the boat. I most likely honestly had post-traumatic stress from the whole ordeal”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“When a man’s dreams live past the horizon of the sea, his soul dies a little each day he spends upon land and each mile he moves farther inland until ultimately one day he is nothing but a shell, empty and dead inside. Like a shell, you can hear the sound of the ocean if you hold it close enough to your ear and truly listen. In the sound of the ocean, you can find a man’s purpose and in his purpose you will find the meaning of his life. If you love this man, you’ll bring him back to the sea and set him free. If you greedily wish to showcase this man like a trophy on your windowsill, he may shine for you at times. Perhaps even your friends will comment how wonderful he is, but trust that a storm is brewing within. Each one of his stares into the distance is foretelling of a voyage of freedom to come. When this storm ultimately hits, it will take all that you have to survive and more likely than not, you’ll be separated in its gales.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“When I had been at sea, she felt so close, yet now living full time on land in our bed she couldn’t have been any more distant than the summit of Mauna Kea from the sea mountain. I longed for this woman beside me, like a first-time marathoner desires the finish line. I could envision the big picture; I saw us as old people holding hands and watching our children graduate from college. I was mentally prepared for the hardest of miles. In my mind, none of our problems were more than a mere hang-up in a lifetime commitment to something bigger than ourselves. Schooled by the sea, I feared not hard work, less than perfect conditions, or the hands of time. Accepting the temperamental nature of the sea and women, I expected this storm to pass as the others had before. She would toss and turn, relentlessly complaining about summer heat in our room, yet no number of blankets could warm me from her wintery chill. I had been over a thousand miles out to sea before, but after the accident, my side of the bed became the loneliest place I ever visited on the planet.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Sometimes, when we lose something major in life, we squeeze too hard on what remains. Afraid we will lose that last part of ourselves with which we are still familiar, we end up strangling the very thing we wish to preserve. I smothered my ex in all the wrong ways. I was weak and needy. I was uncertain and lacked confidence. I’d lost my focus, and for lack of a better term, I was scared. I knew and wanted no other life than working the sea. What I found to be mundane everyday life on shore was painful to me at best.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I’m not going to sit here and tell you I was totally innocent of all wrong doings. I most certainly was not. I was a total asshole during this time. I was absolutely losing my fucking mind. I swam in a sea of anger whose waters were far wider than I could have ever imagined, and I sank to depths I didn’t know I was capable of reaching. I said the most terrible things. I hated her, and I hated myself even more for hating the one I loved. My whole life became just pissing in the wind. Everything I did backfired on me. My life was at a giant standstill, and I was standing in purgatory. Fuck, even lying in a bush during a rainstorm didn’t feel strange. The crazy part was that it was more comfortable than facing the guy in the mirror at home. I came to hate my ex, but I hated myself the most. I was disgusted at who I had become. Who was this fucking broken down drunk”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I went to the bathroom and put each hand forcefully down on opposite sides of the sink. I looked straight into the mirror before me and stared at the person I’d been ignoring for some time now. I didn’t have to say much. I already knew all this person’s demons. I shook my head in disapproval. The alcohol and hate were killing me. What they missed, the depression whittled at unrelentingly. My whole life I had been told that I didn’t look like a fisherman. All the while the only thing I wished to be was a fisherman. I screamed at the mirror in pure rage. “Do I look like a fisherman now?” “Dooooo IIIIIIIIII looook like a fucking fisherman now!!!” “Do I?”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I hadn’t flown half around the world to shack up with a Cairns five. I was here for one reason: to find myself. In the first twelve hours, I had only found the guy I hated, the drunk who fucked anything that walked. The woman was adamant that I take her phone number and email. She scribbled down both on notebook paper. I grasped the sheet of paper, assuring her I’d be in touch. I gave her a final nudge toward the door and a final kiss goodbye, carefully avoiding her snaggle tooth.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Funny enough, I received a phone call and an ultimatum from my wife just moments before we untied the dock lines. The offer was to come home now to save this marriage or don’t come home at all. Morning dew artificially rained from the outriggers as I pulled down on the halyards, deep in thought. I got off the boat and paced up and down the dock. I looked back and forth between my phone and the light-blue hull of the vessel before me shining in the morning light. I sighed deeply. In my heart, I knew the truth was that the other ship back at home had already set sail. Heavyhearted, I looked one last time at the phone and jumped on board.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Chase muttered the likes of “Come on, you big bitch.” However, Billy stood on the bridge like a sentry, quiet and focused. His body was at the helm, but I could tell his mind was swimming beside this great fish. I could picture these two physically imposing creatures staring each other down, neither one willing to blink, both animals stubborn and hardened by decades of being on the reef.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“Above her lateral line she was blacker than night; below she was a metallic silver. Her physically perfect body represented both the heaven and hell she possessed. She had the lustrous lines of a young mistress and brought all the trouble that accompanies one in her devious black eyes. She teased us by exposing herself from the depths but refused to surrender to our desires. Dreams and nightmares live in close proximity when marlin fishing.”

InspirationalLife LessonsLove StoryFishingMemoirsAdventuresTravelersThe SeaDark EdgySportfishing
Book:Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
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“I sat to take in the view. The wind blew just hard enough to push my heavy, unkept hair back. I filled my lungs with the cool air and felt roots begin to take hold. I had always been a restless person, even at this early point in life, and this was a new experience: peace. I felt as though the trees and earth of the mountain reached up into my soul and curled around it, making it whole. The inky blackness I had yet to name, the dark pit that buzzed just below my surface and corroded my thoughts, was quieted. For a moment, it was like I didn't feel it at all. When my mom asked me what was wrong, I told her exactly how I felt as best I could. "My home is in Georgia, but my soul is at home here.”

PeaceNativeNative AmericanRestlessMountainsIndigenousGeorgiaMemoirsPacific NorthwestTribal Homeland
Book:Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
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“The Last Love’s Dance In the tender weave of adulting, friendships softly fade. To part from you is not pride’s cold decree Your absence carves a canyon in my fragile heart’s terrain. Yet, I choose to release you, though my soul aches, no throne of pride, For self-care demands this quiet, piercing break. My waning love, a tender gift, I offer to those who hold me near, Who mend my festering wounds with care. My last tears, like rivers etched from the shattered dreams of youth, Will fall with those who weep within my sorrow’s embrace.”

LoveFriendshipLetting GoHeartbreakBetrayalLost LoveMemoirs
Author:Njau Kihia
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