76 Quotes About Personal-essays

The principal theme of any autobiography revolves around the brushwork of self-transformation, the freeing of the self from the strictures of self-imposed limitations, fears, and doubts. Autobiographical writing represents a heroic journey towards self-discovery; it enables us to get to know ourselves, and initiate a new phase where we begin thinking of the needs of other people.

Storytelling is ultimately the only way that we know besides song, dance, painting, and music to share with our tribesmen what it means to be human, express the indefinable feelings that unite humankind.

The communication function of modern writers is akin to the ancient role fulfilled by tribal shamans. All writers ultimately perform a shamanistic role in society; their mythmaking voices speak to us from the underworld after their passage to the other side. Writers place themselves in a trance-like state where their unconscious mind dictates to them what to write.

A writer is not born but made through study and sheer willpower and ability to embrace beauty and agony.

Days spent in idleness and leisure creates empty pages in the anthology of human beings and leaves no indelible mark in the pages of a person’s life story.

We write in the same manner that we live. We strive to overcome obstacles blocking personal happiness and discover the depth of our being. Each day that I write, I increase the orbit of visual awareness, awaken dormant layers of consciousness, expand the gravitational center of my being, and fill layers of dead space within me with a shimmering light.

Personal essay writing, dialectic discourse with the self, is a process of taking ideas and crushing them like grapes to create a homemade wine.

Personal essay writing is analogous to undertaking a vision quest, a potential turning point in life taken to discover intimate personal truths, form complex abstract thoughts, and ascertain the intended spiritual direction of a person’s life.

I will use narrative writing to explore the past, analyze the present, and speculate upon the future. I will studiously attempt to slay my ego and re-write my sense of self into a benign creature that reflects the worthy character traits of a beloved tortoise.