Quotes & Sayings About Biographies

The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure. — Joseph Campbell

Political science without biography is a form of taxidermy. — Harold Lasswell

Biography is the only true history. — Thomas Carlyle

The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time. — Harold Acton

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Remember the movie 'The Matrix,' where virtual information popped up to help inform physical day-to-day reality? Such things won't always be the stuff of Hollywood. If the Internet is accessible via contact lenses, biographies will appear next to the faces of the people we talk to, and we will see subtitles if they speak a foreign language. — Michio Kaku

If all history is only an amplification of biography, the history of science may be most instructively read in the life and work of the men by whom the realms of Nature have been successively won. — Archibald Geikie

Inthehistorian'sview biography isa kindoffrogspawn it takes ten thousand biographies to make one small history. — Michael Holroyd

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies. — Henry David Thoreau

But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about. — John Green

The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on. — Christine Quinn

Melanie's father had been an Army colonel who instilled in her a sense of duty as well as a sense of individuality. She grew up reading biographies of great men and women, mostly men and women in the military and government, and she recognized through her readings that no one rose to exceptional greatness exclusively by being "a good soldier." No, those few men and women who went against the establishment from time to time, only when necessary, were what ultimately made America great. — Tom Clancy

There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened. — Julius Erving

That's pretty amazing, the countries thing," I said.
"Yeah, everybody's got a talent. I can memorize things. And you can...?"
"Urn, I know a lot of people's last words." It was an indulgence, learning last words. Other people had chocolate;
I had dying declarations.
"Example?"
"I like Henrik Ibsen's. He was a playwright." I knew a lot about Ibsen, but I'd never read any of his plays. I didn't
like reading
plays. I liked reading biographies.
"Yeah, I know who he was," said Chip.
"Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him,
'You seem to be feeling better this morning/ and Ibsen looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he
died."
Chip laughed. "That's morbid. But I like it. — John Green

The magnificent title of the Functional School of Anthropology has been bestowed on myself, in a way on myself, and to a large extent out of my own sense of irresponsibility. — Bronislaw Malinowski

There is no history; only biography. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

I was a voracious reader and the library fed my curiosity, imagination and my soul. I read by the shelf - biographies, fantasy - all and everything fed my dreams. Then as an adult whenever I would go on location the first thing we would do as a family is sign up at the closest library. Not only would we find books, but what was happening in that town, because the library is the head of the community. — Susan Sarandon

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

How do our experiences in childhood make us the adults we become? It is one of the great human questions, the theme of countless novels, biographies, and memoirs; — Paul Tough

I have believed in the biographies I have written. I truly can tell you that they have influenced our society politically, culturally, socially. — Kitty Kelley

Hyperbolic myths of origin have from the earliest times served to lend a paradoxical plausibility to the biographies of heroes. — Michael Chabon

Born evil? I know of no such person, even in the annals of crime or in the biographies of despots. The answer here is no. — Michael H. Stone

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane. — Colm Toibin

Kitty Kelley's method, already perfected in her unauthorised and unflattering biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan, is to write bestsellers that take what she describes as an 'unblinking look' at their subjects - which might, of course, mean that her eyes are permanently open or permanently closed ... the result is a work so bad that Britons cannot realise how fortunate they are in being unable to buy it. The great mistake with this book is not that it has been published in Britain, but that it has actually been published anywhere else. — David Cannadine

I couldn't find a decent threesome guidebook at the library, so I started scouring the Internet, reading biographies, and asking lots of people lots of questions. As it turns out, America is full of trisexuals eager to tell their stories. — Victoria Vantoch

Women are defined by their biography, and men are sacrosanct from their biography. — Kate Braverman

The difference between authorized and unauthorized biographies is the difference between riding in carriage or squatting in steerage. — Kitty Kelley

I read fantasy books like the Harry Potter books, 'Twilight,' also biographies, and I like to read about people who have been through stuff like wars or lost their families - real life stuff, you know? I like to read about their experiences and how they coped with that. — Wynter Gordon

Whatever else it may be, the Qur'an is no work of history. Startlingly, were it not for all the commentaries elucidating its mysteries, all the biographies of the Prophet, and all the sprawling collections of hadiths - none of which, in the form we have them, pre-dates the beginning of the third century after the hijra - we would have only the barest reason to associate it with a man named — Tom Holland

Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies. — Claire Tomalin

READ. You have no business wanting to be a writer unless you are a reader. You should read fantasies and essays, biographies and poetry, fables and fairy tales. Read, read, read, read, read. — Kate DiCamillo

John looked ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter. — John Arbuthnot

We're all shaped to some degree by our own biographies and cultures and it's easy to believe that what's happened before determines what has to come next. The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson thought otherwise. "What lies behind us," he wrote, "and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Finding your Element is about discovering what lies within you and, in doing so, transforming what lies before you. "Risk — Ken Robinson

There won't be any biographies of me, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken farm do not make for exciting copy. — Flannery O'Connor

I don't read biographies for moral instruction, or for a history lesson. I want to know what people are saying about me. — Bauvard

I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending. — Chris Matthews

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false ... In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth. — Abraham Lincoln

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

Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography.Boswell was one ofthesmallest menthat ever lived and he has beaten them all. — Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be? — Henry David Thoreau

I enjoy reading biographies because I want to know about the people who messed up the world. — Marie Dressler

There are biographies, I looked at a lot of photographs of him, I heard his voice over and over and over again. You get in there and get to know the man by all of those pieces of information. — David Strathairn

I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I'm reading biographies of Mahler. — Gustavo Dudamel

Tell them what you do, and if they want to know more, they'll ask. — Auliq Ice

I love reading. I'm very much into history, novels, biographies and I have a wide range of thrillers. — Bruno Tonioli

That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end. — Anthony Holden

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

I have hundreds of art books and the biographies of artists I love, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas. — Jamie Wyeth

Even as we ransack our own diseases, those of other people regard us no less. In an age of biographies, no one bandages his wounds without our attempting to lay them bare, to expose them to broad daylight; if we fail, we turn away, disappointed. And even he who endured on the cross - it is not because he suffered for us that he still counts for something in our eyes, but because he suffered and uttered several lamentations as profound as they were gratuitous. For what we venerate in our gods are our own defeats en beau. — Emil Cioran

Arnold Rampersad's stunningly revealing biography has, at long last, unveiled-in magisterial prose-the very complex and vulnerable man behind Ralph Ellison's own masks and myths. One of the nation's most brilliant writers emerges as all the more fascinating precisely because he was so very human. Painstakingly researched and compellingly written, Ralph Ellison is a masterwork of the genre of literary biography. — Henry Louis Gates

The gospels, never meant to report, but
rather to convince, are in no sense objective and dispassionate biographies. They are glowing accounts meant to persuade people of the writers' convictions. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

[L]ife, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama ... [T]he primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

I am a huge fan of biographies. What I'm always looking for is a story. I want a story I have never heard from anyone else. — Brandon Stanton

A few minutes after they left, Harold bought the blanket from his bed, surrounded himself with his stuffed-toy animals, and built a fort out of them. Children project souls into their favorite stuffed animals and commune with them in the way adults commune with religious icons. Years later he would remember a happy childhood, but it was interwoven with painful separations, confusions, misapprehensions, traumas, and mysteries. This is why all biographies are inadequate; they can never capture the inner currents. This is why self knowledge is limited. Only a few remarkable people can sense the way early experience has built models in the brain. Later in life we build fictions and theories to paper over the mystery of what is happening deep inside, but in childhood, the inexplicableness of the world is still vivid and fresh, and sometimes hits with terrifying force. — David Brooks

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

It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.' — Bernard Malamud

There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy. — Flannery O'Connor

Each second of every time has its own story and history to be filed. — Auliq Ice

A well-dressed, self-assured business executive steps into a quiet corner of the conference room, crowded with people. Everyone there is aware of her presence. She's dark-haired, petite, and alluring. She is quick to smile, and when she does, her whole face lights up. Her enthusiasm is infectious. Young men and women nod as they pass by, briefly breaking off their conversations with colleagues. The executive looks down at her compact electronic device and quickly texts: "Smile. Talk into the mic. Good luck. — Jill Bryant

I have very positive memories of reading biographies of unusual Americans as a child. — Chris Van Allsburg

The facts of a person's life will, like murder, come out. — Norman Sherry

I enjoy biographies and whatnot. I'm also a fan of presidential libraries. I've visited quite a few of them, especially the more modern ones. — David Mandel

[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you. — Henry James

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

I love memoirs and biographies, learning about other people's lives. Two of the ones that I loved so much were actually edited by the same person who edited my book, too. I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I loved 'Glass Castle' so much. — Isabel Gillies

All of our theology must eventually become biography. — Tim Hansel

A biography should be a dissection and demonstration of how a particular human being was made and worked. — H.G.Wells

Are you feeling helpless when you think about the dark roads of the future? Then read the biographies of the great men! Learn their life stories; they will lead you to the light! Buddha will lead you to the light; Gandhi will lead you to the light! Men of wider horizons will broaden our own horizons! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

INTRODUCTION. OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My father, John Steinbeck, was a man who held human history in great reverence, and in particular the biographies of those people who had risked their lives, their fortunes, and their worldly honor to defend the rights and prerogatives of those who were powerless to defend themselves. — Thomas Steinbeck

What novels do that biographies don't is get at truths by penetrating the facts, by going deeper to what's underneath fact, through invention. — Varley O'Connor

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

Your biography is not your destiny, your decisions are. — Tony Robbins

The best interviews like the best biographies should sing the strangeness and variety of the human race. — Lynn Barber

The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal endings. — Anthony Powell

As an actor, you're constantly searching for that great character. Also, being a history buff and learning about people in our past and amazing things that they've done, I came across a book about Howard Hughes and he was set up as basically, the most multi-dimensional character I could ever come across. Often, people have tried to define him in biographies, but no one seems to be able to categorize him. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening. Instead, I ask, After evolution was discovered, how did religion and society respond? After cities were electrified, how did daily life change? After the airplane could fly from one country to another, how did commerce or warfare change? After we walked on the Moon, how differently did we view Earth? My larger understanding of people, places and things derives primarily from stories surrounding questions such as those. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I love biographies. I'm especially into stuff about Hollywood in the '40s and '50s. I find it fascinating and terrifying. — Katie Findlay

I greatly enjoy reading the biographies of scientists, and when doing so I always hope to learn the secrets of their success. Alas, those secrets generally remain elusive. — Jack W. Szostak

Some read biographies of famous Christians to try to short-cut themselves into a deeper walk with the Lord and successful ministry. They think: "If I just copy some of their techniques, beliefs, and quotes, I will have their success." Such thinking, though, creates men who trust in the past work of other believers, living out of their zeal instead of tapping into the actual power of God which these men had. True men of God are only signposts to point the way. Their sign should point to heaven, to the Lord himself. — Greg Gordon

Unloved women have no biographies
they have histories — F Scott Fitzgerald

I shall be the first composer in history not to have a biography. — Pierre Boulez

I write literary biographies, so above all, I have to love the subject's books. But choosing a subject is tough. — Blake Bailey

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

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

I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into. — Jonathan Frakes

Biography is history seen through the prism of a person. — Louis Fischer

Any good biography has to got to lead you to the work. Many biographers have started out in love with their subjects and ended up hating them. — D.T. Max

Some of those drawn into the holy war had been secular nationalists only a few years before. If one looks at the biographies of these people, remarkable continuities are revealed. — Jurgen Habermas

Biography is the mesh through which real life escapes. — Tom Stoppard

What would become of all historical biography if it was written only with consideration for other peoples' feelings? — Johannes Brahms

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent. — Alfred Nobel

I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject ... — Iris Origo

[W.H.R.] Rivers is the Rider Haggard of anthropology; I shall be the Conrad. — Bronislaw Malinowski

I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels,' he says, ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. 'I do not read management or economics.'
(from an interview in the Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 1993) — Peter F. Drucker

We should be familiar with the great histories, the great biographies. We should be familiar with the great success stories, the great love stories, the great philosophies. It would also be a good idea to memorize potent passages from great poetry and other literary works. Our literature also may give us extra, pleasant hours as well as furnish contrasts and comparisons which may help us to evaluate and direct our own lives. — Sterling W. Sill

The beauty and magnitude of a diva's voice resides, so the iconography suggests, in her deformity. Her voice is beautiful because she herself is not-and her ugliness is interpreted as a sign of moral and social deviance. Reading biographies of divas, I can't ignore the repeated references to physical flaws-for example, Benedetta Pisaroni's "features horribly disfigured by small-pox," prompting spectators to shut their eyes "so as to hear without being condemned to see." Audiences speculated that Maria Malibran was not anatomically a woman, but an androgyne or hermaphrodite-an aberrant physique to match her voice's magic power. — Wayne Koestenbaum

Along with all those books about Lincoln, Obama might read some biographies of Napoleon. The general who established the Legion d'Honneur understood that people fought as much for medals as for morals. — Tina Brown