Biographies Quotes - Page 22

• I hope any poem I've ever written could stand on its own and not need to be a part of biography, critical theory or cultural studies. I don't want to give a poetry reading and have to provide the story behind the poem in order for it to make sense to an audience. I certainly don't want the poem to require a critical intermediary - a "spokescritic." I want my poems to be independently meaningful moments of power for a good reader. And that's the expectation I initially bring to other poets' writing.

  Albert Goldbarth

  Meaningful, Reading, Writing

  Source: muse.jhu.edu

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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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• Two Drink Mike enjoys dancing and knows a magic trick. Whereas, No Drink Mike enjoys biographies, and has serious opinions on wildlife. And Five Drink Mike... dances with wildlife.

  Mike Birbiglia

  Funny, Humor, Two

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• I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent to children.

  Joan Didion

  Children, Crazy, Reading

  Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 3, 2006.

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• I love reading - inspirational books, leadership books, biographies. I exercise a lot and put on my audio book. Even If you would offer me a million dollars for my iPod I wouldn't give it to you, because I have some great things on it.

  Robin Sharma

  Book, Reading, Exercise

  Source: www.gqindia.com

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• I don't want to say that most rock bands live these formulaic biography existences - but they kinda do. There's always a divorce. There's always an OD. There's always a bad business manager.

  Dave Grohl

  Divorce, Rocks, Band

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• The biographies are very enlightening because you realise, "Oh my God, all these people I’ve admired - and tried to emulate even - when I was younger died tragically from substance abuse.

  Eva Mendes

  People, Abuse, Substance

  Interview with Vicki Hogarth, uk.askmen.com. November 20, 2009.

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• When I was younger I only read sports books. I loved the biographies that told how athletes developed. When I got into coaching, I did start to read more instructional books, but I was always more interested in the people behind the ideas.

  Tony Dungy

  Sports, Book, Athlete

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• All major publishing houses have these big fat biographies sitting there, waiting for people to die. All you have to do is slap on the end and put in on the market. It's that kind of commoditization and completion of your life before you die - and this kind of imposition of a public idea of self that replaces the actual living self - that I find so frightening.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Ideas, Publishing House, Self

  "Chuck Palahniuk in conversation with Tom Spanbauer". Interview with Kathryn Borel, www.believermag.com. May 2014.

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• I'd prefer people read about Churchill and how he wasn't overwhelmed by Nazi Germany. Amazing; that the morale of a country rested on one person's shoulders. Extraordinary people carried that country through its darkest hours; truly inspirational. I suppose that's my theme. Whether it's a biography or a movie; whether it's fictional or true, I'm inspired by people doing great things.

  Larry Ellison

  Inspirational, Country, People

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• I am perhaps more proud of having helped to redeem the character of the cave-man than of any other single achievement of mine in the field of anthropology.

  Henry Fairfield Osborn

  Character, Science, Pride

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• The creative person should have no other biography than his works.

  B. Traven

  Should Have, Creative, Persons

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• I usually have Kafka biography in my bathroom. It's a book I can open at random and feel interested in immediately. It's really funny. With this book, since I'm opening it at random and immediately interested, I don't feel the need to read more than I want to read, in that there's not, like, a plot that leads me along. So I can stop whenever.

  Tao Lin

  Book, Plot, Needs

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• Some writers just write about their own lives. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to have a really boring life. A quiet, boring life so no one wants to write a biography. I'm the only writer in history only to have one wife, for instance.

  T.C. Boyle

  Writing, Wife, Want

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Women are defined by their biography, and men are sacrosanct from their biography.

  Kate Braverman

  Men, Defined

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• Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.

  David McCullough

  Book, Tests, Novel

  Source: belmontvision.com

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• You have to get inside the people you are writing about. You have to go below the surface. And that's to a very large degree what all writers are doing - they're trying to get below the surface. Whether it's in fiction or poetry or writing history and biography. Some people make that possible because they write wonderful letters and diaries. And you have to sort of go where the material is.

  David McCullough

  Writing, People, Trying

  Source: belmontvision.com

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• I read a lot. I especially read memoirs and biographies. It's very helpful when you're thinking about what's possible and what exists in human behavior; if it exists out there then it can exist on the stage. I really try to go to a lot of concerts. A lot of live events. I just try to keep my ears really, really open.

  Jeanine Tesori

  Thinking, Trying, Events

  "Composer Jeanine Tesori on Her Artistic Process and Rewarding Female Ambition". Interview with Victoria Myers, www.indiewire.com. March 27, 2015.

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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, Facts

  1971 A Sort of Life, preface.

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• As strange as this may sound, I very seldom read fiction. Because my novels require so much research, almost everything I read is non - fiction - histories, biographies, translations of ancient texts.

  Dan Brown

  Sound, Fiction, Research

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• Char Miller's lively, insightful account of the life and world of American forester Gifford Pinchot fills a vitally important gap in environmental and conservation history. Anyone captivated by the issues and controversies surrounding the preservation and development of the nation's natural heritage should read this engaging, carefully researched biography.

  Carolyn Merchant

  Issues, Insightful, Environmental

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• 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 José

  Writing, Soldier, Firsts

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• In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, "memoirs to serve for a history," which is but materials to serve for a mythology.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hands, History, Greek

  Henry David Thoreau (1975). “Early Essays and Miscellanies”, p.60, Princeton University Press

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• Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Book, Cities, Kansas City

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• Elizabeth Rothra's excellent biography of Charles Torrey Simpson restates his philosophies about the intrinsic value of natural ecosystems like the Everglades. No one knew better than he the history of the plants and animals of South Florida or conveyed it with more humor and enthusiasm.

  Marjory Stoneman Douglas

  Philosophy, Animal, Ecosystems

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