Mary Karr

“In terms of cathartic affect, memoir is like therapy, the difference being that in therapy, you pay them. The therapist is the mommy, and you’re the baby. In memoir, you’re the mommy, and the reader’s the baby. And—hopefully—they pay you. (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote for any cause but money,” Samuel Johnson said.)”

― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir