Biographical Sources Quotes

My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.

I don't know that there has ever been a time when Abraham Lincoln didn't stand head-and-shoulders above all other presidents in the historians' eye. But relatively speaking, there have been peaks and a troughs. One peak was in the 1910s-20s; a major trough was in the 1970s-80s. We are certainly on a peak again, something which began in 1994 with Michael Burlingame's 'The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln,' which showed in fabulous detail how many new and untapped sources were available on Lincoln.

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

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.

Biographies never feel as real as the best fiction. There is such a discontinuity between the narrative and the material it comes from, which is always such a mixed bag of letters, recollections, and other data.

With literary biographies, you're either shelved with other biographies or next to your subject's fiction.

I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history - in fact, she had been thrashed out.

No one sits on the stoop when she's a kid and thinks, 'I want to be a biographer when I grow up.'

If you know anything about writing biographies, or what is regarded as a good biography, you have minimum input from the person you are writing about.