Why do we lie to ourselves?

Andre Aciman

 Writers on Writing

Perhaps this is why all memorists lie: we alter the truth on paper so as to alter it in fact; we lie about our past and invent surrogate memories—to make sense of our lives

We write about our life, not to see it as it was, but to see it as we wish others might see it, so we borrow their gaze and see ourselves through their eyes—not ours.

Andre Aciman as well as penning his memoir Out of Egypt has also contributed  to Stories in the Stepmother Tongue about immigrant writers now writing in English.