Top 40 Writing Biographies Quotes
#1. I see myself as writing biographies, the complete story of someone's life.
Susan Isaacs
#2. For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.
Alfred Nobel
#3. I have written a number of short biographical studies of insignificant personages from literary history. My interest has always been in writing biographies of the also-rans: people who lived in the shadow of fame in their own lifetime and who, since their death, have sunk into profound obscurity.
Diane Setterfield
#4. I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century.
David A. Adler
#5. 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.
Claire Tomalin
#6. Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!
Clara Barton
#7. Pope Francis is going to go to Washington, D.C., to address Congress. He believes the New England Patriots have been deflating his giant hat.
David Letterman
#8. Rather than improving the wealth of their own nation, the Mexican government encourages its poor to come to the U.S. and send money home.
Timothy Murphy
#10. If two people believe in the same idea of truth, it is a delusion.
Manu Joseph
#11. 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.
David Lagercrantz
#12. Somebody approached me about writing a biography on me, I told them they were too late.
Zach Braff
#13. I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often better if they're about people the writer doesn't like very much.
Penelope Fitzgerald
#16. It blows me away that my parents, they really weren't much into theater, but they recognized that in me. When I think about the things they did to support that, I'm blown away.
Casey Nicholaw
#17. But the nature of my main work in chemistry can be better represented by more than 280 English publications, of which roughly 200 concern the theory of chemical reactions and related subjects.
Kenichi Fukui
#18. Who else but the maestro of mathematical creativity, Clifford Pickover, to curate a museum of Strange Brains and write biographies of the scientific geniuses who formerly owned them? I'll never look at a pigeon, a pearl, or a Wheatstone bridge the same way again.
Mark Frauenfelder
#19. Live your life as if you are writing your Biography.
Keshia Chante
#20. Timing is everything. It is not so much about who you know, especially now with the Internet, because anybody can become a superstar overnight.
Frankie Knuckles
#21. How many times can a heart be broken before it is beyond mend?
Tarryn Fisher
#22. I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I'd never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS,
John Green
#23. I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject ...
Iris Origo
#24. I haven't had a chance to pick up a good book in a long time, because I've been either reading scripts or learning them or writing them. And so, by the time the day is done, I usually just want to click on The Bachelor and fall asleep. But I gravitate toward biographies and things like that.
Justin Theroux
#25. Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.
Claire Tomalin
#26. Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#28. I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#29. What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,-generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.
John Greenleaf Whittier
#30. A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson's biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It's first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing.
F. Sionil Jose
#31. 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.
Penelope Fitzgerald
#32. Our Land is alive, Esperanza ... This whole valley breathes and lives ... He picked up a handful of earth and studied it. Did you know that when you lie down on the land, you can feel it breathe? That you can feel its heart beating.
Pam Munoz Ryan
#33. While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.
Jerry B. Jenkins
#34. I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
Wole Soyinka
#36. Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.
Deana J. Driver
#37. The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
Samuel Johnson
#38. [On writing biography:] If you wish to see a person you must not start by seeing through him.
Iris Origo
#39. 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.
Holly Johnson
#40. I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.
John Sayles
