Autobiography Quotes - Page 10

• Once I read autobiography as what the writer thought about his or her life. Now I think, 'This is what they thought at that time'. An interim report - that is what an autobiography is.

  Doris Lessing

  Thinking, Interim, Reports

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• The difference between America and England is that the English think 100 miles is a long distance and the Americans think 100 years is a long time. The difference between an autobiography and an unauthorized biography is like the difference between an account of your life written by your mother and one written by your mother-in-law.

  Marilyn vos Savant

  Mother, Distance, Thinking

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• The real subject of autobiography is not one's experience but one's consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool.

  Patricia Hampl

  Real, Self, Tools

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• I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.

  Pablo Picasso

  Writing, People, Diaries

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• I read Gloria Swanson's autobiography just because I wanted to know what it was like in the time.

  Berenice Bejo

  Gloria, Wanted, Knows

  Source: collider.com

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• Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fiction, Charm, Absorbing

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.415, Knopf

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• They asked me what I wanted to call my autobiography. I suggested: The Definitive Volume on the Finest Bloody Fast Bowler That Ever Drew Breath.

  Fred Trueman

  Finest, Volume, Bowlers

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• Autobiography is the most fascinating thing you can do because you get to touch the human condition. And in the end, what else is there? To me, it's the ultimate affirmation of life, and a miracle of this transient, extremely fragile organism. To celebrate that, I think, is a noble thing to do.

  Jim Dine

  Thinking, Miracle, Noble

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• The life of each and every one of us has been written. The crucifix is my autobiography. The blood is the ink. The nails the pen. The skin the parchment. On every line of that body I can trace my life. In the crown of thorns I can read my pride. In the hands that are dug with nails, I can read avarice and greed. In the flesh hanging from him like purple rags, I can read my lust. In feet that are fettered, I can find the times that I ran away and would not let him follow. Any sin that you can think of is written there.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Pride, Thinking, Blood

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• A turning point in the public's perception of the building art came with the publication of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'An Autobiography' of 1932, a picaresque narrative that captivated many who hadn't the slightest inkling of what architects actually did.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Perception, Narrative

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• Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Real, Believe, Writing

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Weight”, Canongate Books

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• Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe.

  Arthur Golden

  Hands, Long, Missing

  "Memoirs of a Geisha". Book by Arthur Golden, September 27, 1997.

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• Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Running, Art

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.17, Lulu Press, Inc

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• This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour. (Autobiography, 1771)

  Benjamin Franklin

  Good Day, Men, Pork

  Benjamin Franklin (1986). “The Autobiography and Other Writings”, p.170, Penguin

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• There's no such thing as autobiography, there's only art and lies

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Lying

  Jeanette Winterson (1995). “Art & Lies : a Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd”, Vintage Canada

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• The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Ideas, People, Important

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• What follows is more about books than it is about me, but nonetheless it is my inward autobiography, for the words we take into ourselves help to shape us.

  Francis Spufford

  Book, Inward, Shapes

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• I had to live and breathe Margaret Thatcher for a few months. I totally engulfed myself in her life. I read her autobiography and a biography, 'The Grocer's Daughter.'

  Alexandra Roach

  Daughter, Mother, Biographies

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• Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism.

  Pedro Almodovar

  Plagiarism

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• Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst.

  Italo Calvino

  Data, Register, Private Things

  Italo Calvino (2017). “The Uses of Literature”, p.345, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I hit adolescence only to discover my autobiography had already been written; plagiarized, in fact, by a man named J.D. Salinger who, in appropriating to himself my inner mass of pain and confusion, had given me the unlikely name of Holden Caulfield.

  Stephen Metcalf

  Pain, Men, Names

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• An autobiography should give the reader opportunity to point out the author's follies and misconceptions.

  Claud Cockburn

  Book, Opportunity, Giving

  Claud Cockburn (1960). “Crossing the Line: Being the Second Volume of Autobiography”, Macgibbon & Kee

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• Of my private life I have nothing to say: it does not concern others. I have always had little liking for autobiographies and have no interest in anyone's affairs. History proper and novels hold no attractions for me except insofar as, I can discern there, as within our immortal Revolution, the adventures of the mind.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Adventure, Mind, Doe

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• All autobiography is fiction.

  Sandra Tsing Loh

  Crafts, Fiction

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• A reflection of my feelings about the space program is found in a quotation from Charles A. Lindbergh's "Autobiography of Values." It reads, "Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes."

  Robert Wise

  Reflection, Space, Feelings

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