Biographies Quotes - Page 5

I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.

Memoirs are the backstairs of history.

biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.

Why should I be limited by my own biography?

Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.

I had to do the book because there was an unauthorised biography which didn't tell it like it was.

You ask whether I am going over to the history of science... no, I am not as old as that.

I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.

Art cannot be subordinate to its subject, otherwise it is not art but biography.

Biography is the best form of history.

I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.

May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me.

I've had three biographies made about my life so people know an awful lot about me.

I'm interested in the truth, and unauthorized biographies are not. Yes, I would like to correct those errors someday.

Carlyle uttered a pregnant truth when he said that the history of any country is in the biographies of the men who made it.

Somebody approached me about writing a biography on me, I told them they were too late.

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)

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That's what you could say about it.

I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.

When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amazing: They are human.

Your biography is not your destiny, your decisions are.

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.

When I hear a politician speak biographically, I never know what's part of the campaign biography narrative that's been carefully crafted.