Autobiography Quotes - Page 4

• Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

  George Orwell

  Disgraceful, Trusted

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

  Oscar Wilde

  Memories, People, Done

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.341, University of Chicago Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Art, Giving, Important

  Evelyn Waugh's review of Stephen Spender "World within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender" in "The Tablet", May 5, 1951.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself.

  Paul Stanley

  Writing, Letters, Love Letter

  "KISS Frontman PAUL STANLEY Confirms That He Is Working On His Autobiography". www.blabbermouth.net. November 30, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The way people move is their autobiography in motion.

  Gerry Spence

  Dance, Moving, Dancing

  16 Copy quote

• Andy Anderson has written an autobiography in pictures, a life on the water. Salt is an eloquent modern paean to the strength and beauty of the coastal waters he cares for at a time when that environment is in danger of disappearing.

  Guy De la Valdene

  Water, Care, Salt

  5 Copy quote

• History is the autobiography of a madman.

  Alexander Herzen

  Madmen

  44 Copy quote

• Memoir is trustworthy and its truth assured when it seeks the relation of self to time, the piecing of the shards of personal experience into the starscape of history's night. The materials of memoir are humble, fugitive, a cottage knitting industry seeking narrative truth across the crevasse of time as autobiography folds itself into the vast, fluid essay that is history. A single voice singing its aria in a corner of the crowded world.

  Patricia Hampl

  Humble, Night, Knitting

  6 Copy quote

• Why is autobiography the most popular form of fiction for modern readers?

  Jill Ker Conway

  Fiction, Modern, Form

  Jill Ker Conway (2011). “When Memory Speaks: Exploring the Art of Autobiography”, p.3, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

  P. D. James

  Fiction, Courses

  FaceBook post by P.D. James from Jul 05, 2016

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To me, craft work is the ultimate. Maybe I got this idea from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, who was employed as a sculptor to the state and church, making coins and things. While he admired Michelangelo, he also made fun of his spiritual angst with art.

  Cass McCombs

  Spiritual, Art, Fun

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Read to your children all of the time
  Novels and nursery rhymes
  Autobiographies, even the newspaper
  It doesn't mater; it's quality time
  Because once upon a time
  We grew up on stories in the voices in which they were told
  We need words to hold us and the world to behold us
  For us to truly know our souls

  Taylor Mali

  Children, Voice, Nurse

  9 Copy quote

• For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography

  Pablo Picasso

  Know How, Knows

  6 Copy quote

• It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Writing, Reality

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.75, Courier Corporation

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all forms of fiction, autobiography is the most gratuitous.

  Tom Stoppard

  Fiction, Form

  Tom Stoppard (2011). “Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon: A Novel”, p.55, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literary lineage is part of your autobiography. The authors are the literary base, the image base, the character base that you bring into your civilian work. Same with film, architecture, music, sports. That's one tributary of the autobiography.

  David Biespiel

  Sports, Character, Architecture

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The brain writes the autobiography of our species at the conscious level.

  David Brooks

  Writing, Brain, Levels

  "David Brooks: From Spouses to Sofas, ‘Emotions Tell Us What to Value". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. March 8, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

  Nina Bawden

  Writing, May, Close Friends

  Nina Bawden (2011). “In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography”, p.99, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I got out of autobiography because my story is, I was famous, it was hard for me, I got into therapy. I had trouble with food, I got a nutritionist. There's no story there.

  Courtney Thorne Smith

  Stories, Trouble, Therapy

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world

  H. L. Mencken

  Interesting, Literature, World

  7 Copy quote

• Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

  Salvador Dali

  Habit, Revelations, Democratic

  42 Copy quote

• I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Inspiration, Writing

  7 Copy quote

• Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

  W. H. Auden

  Character, Self, Two

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Hic et Ille"), (p. 96), 1962.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

  Philip Roth

  Smart, Writing, Fiction

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Aug 17, 2014

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

  Samuel Goldwyn

  Funny, Witty, Book

  22 Copy quote