Skip to content

Writer Quotes by Stacy Schiff

9 Writer quotes by Stacy Schiff

All Writer quotes Stacy Schiff’s page

Stacy Schiff’s thoughts on the writer’s life are brief yet authoritative, reflecting her mastery of biographical storytelling. These nine excerpts give a quick, insightful glimpse into her belief that history can be rendered vivid through compelling prose.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

I'm a sucker for lost worlds. I was nostalgic even as a child. I was happiest in my hometown library in Adams,…

Image

I think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched.

Image

“He was universally charming, as only a writer in pursuit of a publisher can be.”

Image

An interesting thing about book groups, it seems to me, is that there is no correlation between a brilliant book and a…

Image

Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the…

Image

I don't think there is ever objective biography. Our vision of our subject is always shaped by who we are. So I…

Image

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss…

Image

“She did not believe Fate as painstaking as her husband; she was more inclined to take matters into her own hands. She…

Image

Recently a study proved that working from a larger, less cluttered computer screen increases concentration. I could have told them that. And…

Image

Other authors on Writer

More by Stacy Schiff

As always, an educated woman was a dangerous woman.

Image

Recently a study proved that working from a larger, less cluttered computer screen increases concentration. I could have told them that. And yes, I…

Image

“She did not believe Fate as painstaking as her husband; she was more inclined to take matters into her own hands. She had ample…

Image

What we know about Cleopatra's looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a ruler and…

Image

No one in the modern world controls the wealth or territory that Cleopatra did.

Image

“Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest. Against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence - in…

Image

Motherhood is always an act of courage.

Image

Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history; that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years…

Image

“Nabokov complained he was afflicted with total recall, an affliction of which he could be miraculously cured by the presence of a biographer.”

Image

“History existed to be retold, with more panache but not necessarily greater accuracy.”

Image

“Véra assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies…

Image

When a woman teams up with a snake a moral storm threatens somewhere.

Image

The interesting thing about Cleopatra is that she is such a shape-shifter. I mean through history we've all molded her to our times and…

Image

parenting is an exercise in unintended consequences.

Image

Strangely enough, politics may just be the one realm in which having kids imposes no penalty on women. Kids are practically a necessity. For…

Image