Quotes About Biography

I'm a biographer; I can live with a little hyperbole.

If I am playing a historical character, I try to watch the person in newsreels and read about them, but I will not imitate them.

Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people -- the autobiographists and the biographists.

There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction. What does that tell you about the nature of life, and does one really want to know?

Hitler specifically chooses Carlyle's book because it was the eminent Scottish historian who set forth the "Great Man" theory of history, which states that "the history of the world is but a biography of great men." Leonidas

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

I'd read Stone Cold's biography about how he lived on, like, raw potatoes, and I thought, this is all part of it. This is what wrestlers do, and this is what I'm going to do.

It is hard for anyone who discovers George Washington not to write about him, perhaps because he is so hard to discover and such a surprise when you do.

After 'Lindbergh,' my publisher asked whom I wanted to write about next. I said, 'There's one idea I've been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It's Woodrow Wilson.'

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

Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.

A great writer requires a great biography, and a great biography must tell the truth.

If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you'd get 10 very different movies.

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

The authorized biographers - the ones hand-picked to write the sanitized version of a subject's life - sit up front with the swells while the unauthorized biographer who writes without access or approval gets elbowed to the back of the bus.

I'm not one of those people who writes a biography or tries to figure out what kind of ice cream the character liked when he was 10.

The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.

Though just biographical record will touch the failings of the good and the eminent with tenderness.

Ironically, the first full Baskerville biography published by CUP in 1907 was printed in Caslon

I was recently told about this new biography by Simon Roberts and as a fan of true gritty "behind the scenes" stories this book did not disappoint! It offers a unique and often humorous look at life in the HK Police from his first hand perspective. After reading Hong Kong Beat I am left with the feeling there may be more to come from Mr. Roberts...

Young Stalin Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner

The Reign of Edward III by W. Mark Ormrod; and Edward III by the same

I kind of flew into a panic that somebody would have already owned the rights, because Christina Noble's life is such a good story. It took us two full years to get Christina to agree and sign the rights.