“The belief in a definable, consistent self, an identity that develops through the course of a life-story and that can be conclusively described, breaks down, to a great extent, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
“Johnson argued that the most truthful life-writing is when ‘the writer tells his own story’, since only he knows the whole truth about himself.… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
“I lost count of the incidences of "We can imagine" or "It is safe to imagine" or "We can speculate" or "We can picture… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
“Biographers are not usually as explicit as philosophers such as Plato, Wittgenstein, Austin, or Moore on questions of the existence of an essential self,… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
Writing a biography is not a love affair. It’s not a marriage. It’s a job, it’s a piece of work. — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
“The belief in a definable, consistent self, an identity that develops through the course of a life-story and that can be conclusively described, breaks… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
“From Tudor to eighteenth-century England, there are many instances of women writers with no place or room of their own. The life-story of the… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
“A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living': so too with the biography of that self. And just as… — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
Some cynical biographer said to me, Make sure it's a good death. Make sure you're not picking someone who just declined. — Hermione Lee Copy Share Image
