Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
My father always read obituaries to me out loud, not because he was maudlin or morbid, but because they were mini biographies.
Behind each biography there should always be a rich treasury of unformulated knowledge, a tapestry that has not been unrolled.
Between history and the novel stands biography, their unwanted offspring, which has brought a great embarrassment to them both.
I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.
I do read on holiday, but it tends to be very lowbrow. I'm into really camp biographies, and I'm a shameless fan of Jilly Cooper.
I've been a lifelong horror fan, but at the same time, I would say 90 percent of my reading is biographies and nonfiction history.
I got very keen on biography because I wanted to change it. I wanted to stretch the form. I think of it as a way of capturing souls.
The difference between authorized and unauthorized biographies is the difference between riding in carriage or squatting in steerage.
I do read a lot of autobiographies and biographies but from people who are not in my field - older women, older artists, Miles Davis.
I feel I have to live a little longer before I write a sequel to my auto biography which covers my experiences up until October 1991.
There will be some trouble about 'biography' because I have never troubled myself to supply particulars of my early life to any writer.
When I hear a politician speak biographically, I never know what's part of the campaign biography narrative that's been carefully crafted.
True crime has long been a passion for me, but I'm also a sucker for biographies, particularly of politicians, writers, or Hollywood icons.
The biographies of the great rarely report much about the nanny, but for many, she will have played a crucial role in their formative years.
biography cannot be separated from autobiography: that is, the life written about is inextricably entangled with the life of the biographer.
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography.Boswell was one ofthesmallest menthat ever lived and he has beaten them all.
I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.
What novels do that biographies don't is get at truths by penetrating the facts, by going deeper to what's underneath fact, through invention.
Any good biography has to got to lead you to the work. Many biographers have started out in love with their subjects and ended up hating them.
Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
I have believed in the biographies I have written. I truly can tell you that they have influenced our society politically, culturally, socially.
Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.
I will read biographies or autobiographies while I'm writing, but mostly I put books in a to-read queue, like Rachel Cusk's new novel, "Outline."
For someone who made such an enormous contribution to American literature, Mark Twain has been the subject of many books but few major biographies.
On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.
The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.
I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
My father was highbrow: writing long biographies of Dante and stuff like that. Ghostwriting sportsman memoirs? That was sort of the lowest of the low.
Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.
On the trail of another man, the biographer must put up with finding himself at every turn; any biography uneasily shelters an autobiography within it.
I have not much interest in anyone's personal history after the tenth year, not even my own. Whatever one was going to be was all prepared before that.
Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false... In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.
I'd put the most money on Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson - and not just because we'll probably still be waiting for the final volume in 2017.
[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover to cover.
When I read Andrew Motion's biography, I wept. It's something about the purity of the story and how fresh it was because of the love letters Keats wrote.
My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them.
All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
I first wrote a biography of Thomas Carlyle, and it turned out I loved writing biographies and had a talent for it. I believed I had a contribution to make.
When I was growing up, I read Britney Spears' and Mariah Carey's biographies. I just wanted to see how they did it because I was so eager to get into the biz.
If you read any sort of, like, military general autobiographies or biographies, most of them never wanted to fight, you know? It's necessary. War is necessary.
My lectures were highly esteemed, but my operations less thought of, so that I am of opinion that my operations rather kept down my practice, than increased it.
Biographies of me have usually been compiled from old newspaper clips, untruthful publicity stories, and reminiscences of people who claim to have known me well.
With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the thought of their biographies being written.
A biography is never a biography of one person, of course, but the individual life of your protagonist will never conform. It will always bang up against history.
Bob Hope was an entertainment colossus, shrewd and influential well beyond show business. Richard Zoglin's biography captures it all--the public and private Hope.
I was reading William Shawcross's biography of the Queen Mother, dressed in my witch outfit! And you know what? It was a really good mix; it was a therapeutic mix.
I started out as a writer of fiction, but nobody wanted to publish my work as a young man. So I decided to put my interest in the narrative writing of biographies.