Melvyn Bragg Quotes

I think I do more fiction than autobiography.

When you write an autobiography, it has to be authentic.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.

I've written a lot of autobiography, which also involved listening.

Writers do draw inspiration from their own lives, which, quite frankly, might be more interesting than fiction.

I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.

If you're going to write about your life, you must write about your life.

I don't write autobiographically.

The easiest thing to write was 'Fever Pitch' because it was a memoir.

The idea of a memoir is to tell the truth. I know that often the truth hurts, but a lie hurts even more.

You write an autobiography because you want to tell people how you felt about a certain matter at that time.

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

That accurst autobiographic form which puts a premium on the loose, the improvised, the cheap, and the easy.

I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

I am not an autobiographical writer.

In my new book, 'Binge,' I share essays about everything I've never told my viewers - touching on the best and worst days of my life, some hilarious, some embarrassing, but all extremely personal.

I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me.

There may be a point where I may decide to write an autobiography.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

I write autobiographically, although I apply liberal amounts of poetic license.

I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.

Not to be too 'Tale of Two Cities' about it, but I find writing a memoir easier than writing fiction, and more difficult.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.