Autobiography Quotes - Page 7

• I found the best ideas usually came, not when one was actively striving for them, but when one was in a more relaxed state… I used to take long solitary walks on Sundays, during which I tended to review the current situation in a leisurely way. Such occasions often proved fruitful, even though (or perhaps, because) the primary purpose of the walk was relaxation and not research.

  Paul Dirac

  Sunday, Ideas, Long

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• Prep school, public school, university: these now tedious influences standardize English autobiography, giving the educated Englishman the sad if fascinating appearance of a stuffed bird of sly and beady eye in some old seaside museum. The fixation on school has become a class trait. It manifests itself as a mixture of incurious piety and parlour game.

  V. S. Pritchett

  School, Eye, Games

  "The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers" by Random House, (p. 95), 1980.

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• Autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two.

  Ellery Sedgwick

  Two, Legacy, Chapters

  "The Happy Profession". Book by Ellery Sedgwick, ch. 1, 1948.

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• Everything is autobiography, even if one writes something that is totally objective. The fact that it's a subject that seizes you makes it autobiographical.

  Lisel Mueller

  Writing, Facts, Subjects

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• In writing the autobiography, I can really chuckle when I look at the songs. I was acting out the part. I saw myself as a victim.

  Boy George

  Song, Writing, Acting

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• I keep stacks of Autobiography of a Yogi around the house, and I give it out constantly to people. When people need 'regrooving,' I say read this, because it cuts to the heart of every religion.

  George Harrison

  Heart, Cutting, People

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• A form of art that I like is portraiture. I've been thinking about portraiture, and its relationship to writing and literature, biography and autobiography, and so that will be my next thing.

  Robert Dessaix

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.compulsivereader.com

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• I believe artists should be able to step into other people's situations, contexts and cultures and work from there. If artists don't have that freedom, then, as someone has said, are we all writing our autobiographies?

  Uwem Akpan

  Believe, Writing, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I have to say in premise 'Winter Journal' is really not a memoir. And I don't even think of it as an autobiography. I think of it as a literary composition - similar to music - composed of autobiographical fragments. I'm really not telling the story of my life in a coherent narrative form.

  Paul Auster

  Winter, Thinking, Stories

  Time Out Interview, www.timeout.com.

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• I was born and have ever remaind [sic] in the most humble walks of life.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Humility, Humble, Born

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• I was elected a Captain of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Volunteer, Captains, Pleasure

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.50, Fordham Univ Press

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• An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' - it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

  Graham Greene

  Errors, May, Biographies

  1971 A Sort of Life, preface.

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• I always thought of writing as public, I never thought of writing a diary. I had been struck by, jolted by things I had read, and I wanted to do the same to others. I don't think it ever was the notion of an autobiography; I skipped that phase totally, I think.

  Vito Acconci

  Writing, Thinking, Diaries

  Interview with Shelley Jackson, believermag.com. January 1, 2007.

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• Travel books are all sorts - some are autobiographies, some are about falling in love. Some are about having great meals, some are about suffering. There are as many different kinds of travel books as there are novels. People think a travel book is one thing. It's many things.

  Paul Theroux

  Falling In Love, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I don't want to get into autobiographies, I don't want to talk about myself.

  Rollie Fingers

  Want

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• Autobiography is mostly alibiography.

  Clare Boothe Luce

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• It may be that this autobiography [Aimee Semple McPherson's] is set down in sincerity, frankness, and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.

  Dorothy Parker

  Simple, Lakes, Effort

  New Yorker, 25 Feb. 1928

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• Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.

  Henry James

  Expression, May, Kind

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• The autobiographer looks at life through the lens of his or her own life and really uses herself or himself as the jumping-off place to examine the social mores and the economic and political climates. In a way, the autobiography becomes history as well as the story of one person, for it becomes the story of a family or the story of the state or nation.

  Maya Angelou

  Jumping, Political, Climate

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• Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?

  Margaret Atwood

  Plato, Liars, Lying

  "Margaret Atwood : Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered At Hay On Wye, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

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• A scientific autobiography belongs to a most awkward literary genre. If the difficulties facing a man trying to record his life are great - and few have overcome them successfully - they are compounded in the case of scientists, of whom many lead monotonous and uneventful lives and who, besides, often do not know how to write . . .

  Erwin Chargaff

  Writing, Men, Literary Genre

  Erwin Chargaff (1978). “Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature”, p.61, Paul & Company Pub Consortium

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• In a novel there's not much autobiography. There are characters in transit. Naturally, I can project something of my experiences onto the characters, but they have their own autonomy, a personality that is often a mystery to me.

  Dacia Maraini

  Character, Personality, Mystery

  Source: wordswithoutborders.org

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• I went to Hollywood. I put the action in Hollywood. I watched a lot of movies, maybe 100 or something close to that. I have tons of DVDs now at home. I don't know what to do with them because they're not useful anymore. My kids never watched them. I read a lot of autobiographies, listened to a lot of music by classical era composers like Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman and Leonard Bernstein. I listened to only that kind of music the entire time I was writing, even at home.

  Michel Hazanavicius

  Kids, Home, Writing

  "Director Michel Hazanavicius THE ARTIST Interview". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. November 26, 2011.

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• People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
  A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal.

  James Boswell

  Heart, Kids, Men

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• Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream.

  Clarence Darrow

  Dream, Imagination, Perspective

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.13, Lulu.com

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