Autobiography Quotes - Page 14

• My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy; but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.

  Charles Darwin

  Country, Book, Years

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 29: “Erasmus Darwin” by Ernest Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin; “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” Edited by Nora Barlow; and Consolidated Index”, p.159, NYU Press

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• Everywhere in science the talk is of winners, patents, pressures, money, no money, the rat race, the lot; things that are so completely alien ... that I no longer know whether I can be classified as a modern scientist or as an example of a beast on the way to extinction.

  June Goodfield

  Race, Patents, Example

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• What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me ... I should prefer the obedience, affections and instinct of a dog before it.

  Michael Faraday

  Dog, Men, Average

  Michael Faraday, F. James (1999). “The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Volume 4: 1849-1855”, p.542, IET

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• When you realize how hard it is to know the truth about yourself, you understand that even the most exhaustive and well-meaning autobiography, determined to tell the truth, represents, at best, a guess. There have been times in my life when I felt incredibly happy. Life was full. I seemed productive. Then I thought,"Am I really happy or am I merely masking a deep depression with frantic activity?" If I don't know such basic things about myself, who does?

  Phyllis Rose

  Truth, Happy Life, Doe

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• Nature did not make me willowy.

  Dixie Lee Ray

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• I have a song I wrote called “Autobiography.” I came from a very intense living situation, with having a parent on drugs and not having a lot of money. So I always want to talk about the real things. But I think 90 percent of my music, I want it to be 'feel-good music'. I'm already recording tracks for my album, but when it comes time to actually say, 'this is the album,' I may be in a completely different space than I'm in right now.

  Nicki Minaj

  Song, Real, Thinking

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• At Arcueil ... I dined in distinguished company... There was a lot of very interesting discussion. It is these gatherings which are the joy of life.

  Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

  Interesting, Joy, Gathering

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• 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.

  William Golding

  Men, Paper, Biographies

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• Everyone plagiarizes me. Ever since I wrote my autobiography.

  Joe Biden

  "Chris Wallace Interviews Joe Biden". Interview with Chris Wallace, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 22, 2015.

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• I have very rarely written autobiographical stuff. "Greasy Lake" and some other works have some autobiographical elements, as does "Birnam Wood," the one I chose to end [this collection] with. I lived in that house and some of my feelings are expressed in it, but it's not autobiography. It was not me and that didn't happen exactly that way.

  T.C. Boyle

  Lakes, House, Feelings

  Source: therumpus.net

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• One of my heroes is Mr. Sidney Poitier. In his autobiography, "The Measure of a Man," he talks about the difference between being a great person and being a great actor. I'm happiest when I'm acting, and I've dedicated my life to it. Still, as much as I love acting, at the end of the day, I want to be remembered as a great person, first, and as a great actor, second. I believe that acting is a talent while being a great person encompasses so much more: being a good father, a good husband and the ability to show compassion for others.

  Michael Ealy

  Husband, Father, Believe

  Source: aalbc.com

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• I don't think men experience the embargo on channeling the autobiography in their literature.

  Kate Zambreno

  Men, Thinking, Literature

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela announced Tuesday he will begin writing his autobiography. He spent 25 years in prison before being elected to public office. In America, we do it the other way around.

  Argus Hamilton

  Writing, Years, America

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• I wasn't allowed to use people's real names, such as my siblings and my children's father, but there's nothing fabricated or untrue in my autobiography.

  Kola Boof

  Children, Father, Sibling

  "Kola Boof: Words with the Author of the Best Black Book of 2006". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

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• This may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.

  Dani Shapiro

  Memories, Mind, Stories

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I think there is a great tendency toward autobiography among women today. It is perhaps facile - and I say that even though I have written one myself.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Thinking, Today, Tendencies

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

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• When my relations with the Communist Party gave me the necessary perspective I decided to write my autobiography. I wanted to show how a man can pass from literature held sacred to action which nevertheless remains that of an intellectual.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Party, Writing, Men

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• I was kind of relieved with the way the book [The Proud Highway] came out. It's beyond an autobiography or a biography. I never knew what was going to come up next.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Book, Proud, Biographies

  Source: www.fargonebooks.com

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• I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been writing them.

  Anna Quindlen

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• I believe that if we could see the chapters that are missing from the book [The Autobiography of Malcolm X], we would gain an understanding as to why perhaps - perhaps - the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the New York Police Department and others in law enforcement greatly feared what Malcolm X was about, because he was trying to build a broad - an unprecedented black coalition across the lines of black nationalism and integration. And in way, it presages 30 years ahead of time, the Million Man March.

  Manning Marable

  New York, Book, Believe

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• Most people who read the autobiography perceive the narrative as a story that now millions of people know, and it was - it's a story of human transformation, the powerful epiphany, Malcolm's X journey to Mecca, his renunciation of the Nation of Islam's racial separatism, his embrace of universal humanity, of humanism that was articulated through Sunni Islam. Well, that's the story everybody knows.

  Manning Marable

  Powerful, Journey, People

  "The Undiscovered Malcolm X: Stunning New Info on the Assassination, His Plans to Unite the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist Movements & the 3 'Missing' Chapters from His Autobiography". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. February 21, 2005.

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• Ric Flair was so big I heard about him. I've read his autobiography and all that. He's huge.

  Bill Burr

  Bigs, Flair, Heard

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• My autobiography is one of the truest, most frankly written books ever published in the western hemisphere.

  Kola Boof

  Book, Hemisphere, Western

  "Kola Boof: Words with the Author of the Best Black Book of 2006". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

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

  Stella Benson

  Thinking, Two, People

  Stella Benson (1924). “Pipers and a dancer”

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• Documenting one's life in the midst of living it is a strange pursuit.

  Rosanne Cash

  Strange, Midst, Pursuit

  Rosanne Cash (2010). “Composed: A Memoir”, p.8, Penguin

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