Top Nick Flynn Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Nick Flynn Biography

Nick Flynn (born January 26, 1960) is an American writer, playwright, and poet. His most recent publication is The Reenactments, which chronicles Flynn's experience during the making of Being Flynn, a film based on his acclaimed 2004 memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Flynn is also the author of three collections of poetry, including Some Ether, which won the inaugural PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry in 1999, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Read about Nick Flynn in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Nick Flynn Quotes

Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.

Alcohol, Banks, Past, River, Rivers, Sink

In life you get one take, and it's perfect. It's strange, afterwards you might think I shouldn't have reacted that way, but that's the way you reacted. That's your take; that's all you get.

Thinking, Perfect, Might, Strange, Reacted

Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.

Fall, Long, Silence, Story, Falling

I believe poetry has very little to do with memory.

Believe, Littles, Memories, Memory, Poetry

By the time I make my way to the border of Mauritania, to the edge of the Sahara, I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn't a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.

Essentials, Fall, General, Long, State, Time

Water can be a symbol of purification, to stand naked before someone a sign of truth, of nothing to hide. - Nick Flynn

Naked, Nick, Purification, Symbol, Water

That soldiers do terrible things during wartime should not surprise us.

Soldier, Surprise, Wartime, Terrible, Things

There is a physics to the world, which non-fiction has a contract to stand in awe of, otherwise it becomes completely self-centered and ego-driven, which is the death of a memoir.

Awe, Ego, Fiction, Self, Stand, World

If you're going to write about someone's life, you don't just use them for wallpaper. You have to honor and respect that life.

Writing, Honor And Respect, Use, Write, Honor

inside us, a flower taken whole, a field built inside.

Field, Fields, Flower, Taken

There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.

Arms, Obvious, Wave, Way, Ways

If it had been a heart attack, the newspapermight have used the word massive,as if a mountain range had openedinside her, but insteadit used the word suddenly, a light coming onin an empty room. The telephonefell from my shoulder, a black parrot repeatingsomething happened, something awfula sunday, dusky. If it had beenterminal, we could have cradled heras she grew smaller, wiped her mouth,said good-bye. But it was sudden,how overnight we could be orphaned& the world became a bell we'd crawl inside& the ringing all we'd eat.

Bye, Heart, Parrot, Ringing, Smaller, Sunday

I offer Emily half of my hit of acid- Love Saves the Day. It's my second or third time tripping, Emily's first, and she's understandably trepid. Awake all night, at one point I find her touching her reflection in a cruelly lit dorm bathroom, asking if she'll ever be the same. I kiss her then for the first time and whisper, No.

Hit, Kissing, Night, Reflection, Trepid

In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.

Clings, Come, Giving, Hull, Steel, Texture

Everything we do, I'd imagine, influences everything we will do.

Everything, Imagine, Influence, Influences

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

Events, Stories, Who We Are, Matter, Define

The first book I could call mine, my first book, was a picture book, The Magic Monkey - it was adapted from an old Chinese legend by a thirteen-year-old prodigy named Plato Chan with the help of his sister.

Plato, Book, Years, Chinese, Old

Change is one of the only constants in Buddhism; as meditation became the way I breathed in the days, this became apparent.

Buddhism, Meditation, Way, Apparent, Became

Memoir is actually the most egoless genre, even though it might seem ostensibly so much ego-driven. In order for it to succeed, you have to dissolve the self into these larger universal truths, and explore these deeper mysteries. If it’s purely autobiographical and ego-driven, it’s going to fail.

Autobiographical, Ego, Larger, Order, Ostensibly, Self

On a good day I write, all day.

Day, Good, Good Day, Write, Writing

1