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.
A life worth living is a life worth recording.
Documenting one's life in the midst of living it is a strange pursuit.
If your life's worth living, it's worth recording.
It is important to know that what I do is not artistic. I am just a film-maker. I live how I live and I do what I do, which is recording moments of my life as I move ahead. And I do it because I am compelled to. Necessity, not artistry, is the true line you can follow in my life and work.
The Victorians, they were like the Germans in World War II. They could not stop recording details about their lives and their age.
I have little children, 5 1/2 and 1 1/2, and I thought I should document my life, because by the time they're in the mid-20s, they'll be able to say, 'This is what he did.'
To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.
We're all creating an archive of our own lives, whether we're aware of it or not.
I think the best thing about my job is that I have my life documented, which not many people get to have. They have a photo here and there and maybe some video footage from a birthday. My kids will be able to see me growing up.
A scientific autobiography belongs to a most awkward literary genre. If the difficulties facing a man trying to record his life are great - and few have overcome them successfully - they are compounded in the case of scientists, of whom many lead monotonous and uneventful lives and who, besides, often do not know how to write . . .
