Biography Quotes

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its promise.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

I would do a documentary about Jay-Z. Yes, I would.

I read Michael Caine's biography. It was about him growing up

Every man has his disciples, and it’s always Judas who writes the biography

There is properly no history; only biography.

I'm a writer. I've been a journalist for my whole adult life.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

Remember, young man, experience is not the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher. By reading about the lives of great people, you can unlock the secrets to what made them great.

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.

I'm not spitting in my own soup, I love having spent my life thinking about these things-but you don't have to know anything about his life, even though I've just written a biography!

Your biography is not your destiny, your decisions are.

As far as reading is concerned, I like historical and political books and works of art.

L. Ron Hubbard [founder of Scientology] was a falling-down drunk who drank himself to death.

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.

Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies.

I ventured into fiction in 1988 with 'What Love Sees,' a biographical novel of a woman's unwavering determination to lead a full life despite blindness.

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.

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me.

What use is there for a biography of myself? I'm just a movie actor.

Biography is the best form of history.

I was reading William Shawcross's biography of the Queen Mother, dressed in my witch outfit! And you know what? It was a really good mix; it was a therapeutic mix.

I can't relax when I'm watching a biographical drama because it's so close to what it is that I do that I just long for more fiction - so that I can switch off.