A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) - ISBN: 9781466819016