Quotes on Biography

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.

Author: Catherine Bowen

I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era.

Author: Barbara Bradford

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

Author: William Channing

I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.

Author: Jonathan Coe

I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based.

Author: Jonathan Dimbleby

I think that I'm busy in the present, and I don't want to go back. Well, there's been an unauthorized biography, and you can't stop them. It didn't worry me.

Author: Albert Finney

We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?

Author: John Galbraith

Biography, like big game hunting, is one of the recognized forms of sport, and it is as unfair as only sport can be.

Author: Philip Guedalla

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

Author: George Plimpton

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

Author: Mark Shields

I'm an avid biography reader.

Author: Brent Spiner

Perfect objectivity is always impossible, no matter who writes a person's biography.

Author: Pamela Stephenson

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

Author: Lytton Strachey

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

Author: Anthony Trollope

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Author: Mark Twain

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

Author: John Updike

The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island.

Author: Derek Walcott

This is the best biography by me I have ever read.

Author: Lawrence Welk

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be.

Author: Edmund White

Quotes on Biography

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps.

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

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.

I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era.

One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.

I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.

I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based.

I think that I'm busy in the present, and I don't want to go back. Well, there's been an unauthorized biography, and you can't stop them. It didn't worry me.

We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?

Biography, like big game hunting, is one of the recognized forms of sport, and it is as unfair as only sport can be.

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

John Kerry's biography was central to his campaign.

I'm an avid biography reader.

Perfect objectivity is always impossible, no matter who writes a person's biography.

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island.

This is the best biography by me I have ever read.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be.