Biographies Quotes - Page 13

• Like Richard Ellmann on James Joyce, Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison is in a class of its own. His masterful and magisterial book is the most powerful and profound treatment of Ellison's undeniable artistic genius, deep personal flaws, and controversial political evolution. And he reveals an Ellison unbeknownst to all of us. From now on, all serious scholarship on Ellison must begin with Rampersad's instant and inimitable classic in literary biography.

  Cornel West

  Powerful, Book, Class

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• Read no less than ½ hour a day or listen to audiobooks while in the car or cleaning the house. Biographies of great people taught me, as I said, that even eminent people fail but keep getting up.

  Tony Robbins

  People, Car, House

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns is an American masterpiece, a stupendous literary success that channels the social sciences as iconic biography in order to tell a vast story of a people's reinvention of itself and of a nation-the first complete history of the Great Black Migration from start to finish, north, east, west.

  David Levering Lewis

  Order, People, Black

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• I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.

  A. Scott Berg

  Thinking, Interesting, Life And Time

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• When I hear a politician speak biographically, I never know what's part of the campaign biography narrative that's been carefully crafted.

  Terry Gross

  Campaigns, Narrative, Speak

  "Covering Hillary Clinton, A Candidate 'Forged In The Crucible' Of Conflict". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. July 27, 2016.

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• I always use primary sources, in addition to reading biographies and other materials.

  Nancy Horan

  Reading, Use, Source

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• I read every biography [of Jackie Kennedy] I could get my hands on.

  Natalie Portman

  Hands, Jackie

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• There were, like, 20 of [Jackie Kennedy's biographies], which was interesting because they are not exactly high literature - they are pulpy.But the [Arthur] Schlesinger transcripts ended up being the most useful of anything.

  Natalie Portman

  Interesting, Literature, Arthur

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, monachism of the Hermit Anthony, the Reformation of Luther, Quakerism of Fox, Methodism of Wesley, abolition of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome;" and all history resolves itself easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man, then, know his worth, and keep things under his feet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Rome, Feet

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• Live your life as if you are writing your Biography.

  Keshia Chante

  Writing, Live Your Life, Ifs

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• I'm writing my biography. It's my business. This is what happened in my life, and I'm writing about it.

  Sammy Hagar

  Writing, Happened, My Biography

  Interview with Steven Hyden, music.avclub.com. April 5, 2011.

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• We're artists. We cry out to be exploited on some level. Write a dissertation on my work. Write a biography about me.

  Scott McClanahan

  Writing, Artist, Levels

  Source: www.thefader.com

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• biography cannot be separated from autobiography: that is, the life written about is inextricably entangled with the life of the biographer.

  Linda Simon

  Autobiography, Biographers, Written

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• If you read the biography of any great man, you will always notice two things: His mother's contribution in his progress and his teacher's contribution in his growth and development.

  Narendra Modi

  Education, Mother, Teacher

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• Sin in the Second City is a masterful history lesson, a harrowing biography, and - best of all - a superfun read. The Everleigh story closely follows the turns of American history like a little sister. I can't recommend this book loudly enough.

  Darin Strauss

  Book, Cities, Little Sister

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• I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don't give the poor chap a chance...the Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography.

  Ian Fleming

  Sorry, Team, Writing

  "Casino Royale". Book by Ian Fleming, ch. 20: The Nature Of Evil, 1953.

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• May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me.

  James M. Barrie

  Writing, May, Blast

  "Hide-and-seek with Angels: The Life of J.M. Barrie". Book by Lisa Chaney, www.theguardian.com. 2005.

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• The rumors of Frank Sinatras violence and his ties to organized crime were such that journalists joked in print about me ending up in concrete boots and sleeping with the fishes if I proceeded to write his biography.

  Kitty Kelley

  Writing, Sleep, Ties

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• Memoirs give the knowledge about the author and his environment. They are different from biography. Memoirs do not get ahead, and the man who writes a biography looks at his future like at a very simple thing.

  Arthur Golden

  Writing, Simple, Men

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• I enjoy biographies and whatnot. I'm also a fan of presidential libraries. I've visited quite a few of them, especially the more modern ones.

  David Mandel

  Presidential, Library, Fans

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Cousin, Writing, House

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.635, Library of America

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• Whenever I felt tempted to, I don’t know, watch cat videos or bad Netflix TV instead of writing this Brandeis biography, I thought of his stern but kindly visage and buckled down and wrote the damn thing, because there’s so much information out there, and these are such anxious times in democracy, such unreasonable times.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Writing, Cat, Democracy

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

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• [Freud's] great strength, though sometimes also his weakness, was the quite extraordinary respect he had for the singular fact... When he got hold of a simple but significant fact he would feel, and know, that it was an example of something general or universal, and the idea of collecting statistics on the matter was quite alien to him.

  Ernest Jones

  Science, Simple, Ideas

  Ernest Jones (1961). “The life and work of Sigmund Freud”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• My first big acting performance was in the Marilyn Monroe biography piece, and it required frontal nudity. I talked to Mira Sorvino, my co-star, about how nervous I was because I didn't know how my mom would react. She said, 'Can I be completely honest with you? I've seen your mom in interviews, and she seems pretty screwed up. I don't think there's much you could do to shock a broad like that.' And from that moment on it was big nipples to the wind!

  Ashley Judd

  Mom, Stars, Thinking

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• When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Grief, Heart, Men

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