Biographical Inaccuracy Quotes

I've never talked to anyone writing a book on me. I've had so much written about me that is made up, usually something that seems silly enough or weird enough to get remarked upon, and it's pretty much all fiction.

I found my childhood scrapbook and there's an interview in there with dad from 1970. He talks about how long he's been playing the drums and he'd only been playing drums six years in 1970.

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

Many believe that Hillary Clinton was channeling President Obama during her recent speech in New York City. She focused on equality, justice, and how hard it was for her growing up as a young black man in Hawaii.

If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter.

When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.

Thomas More's birth was noted by his father upon a blank page at the back of a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Historia Regum Britanniae'; for a lawyer John More was remarkably inexact in his references to that natal year, and the date has been moved from 1477 to 1478 and back again.

[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.

A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'

Steve Wozniak admittedly would never like say the things he said to Steve Jobs [in the movie] in the context that he said them.

What I'm resistant to is the 'Walk the Line' biopic, where you have this redemptive life done in two hours. It just doesn't wash with me. I've been there and things don't work out that way.

I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.