Biographies Quote by Anthony Powell

“People think because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel's invented, it is true. Biography and…

— Anthony Powell

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

— V. S. Naipaul

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an…

— William Golding

Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream.

— Clarence Darrow

Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction.

— Frank Harris

All fiction is lies – if it weren’t, it would be biography, history, or reportage.

— Norman Spinrad

It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are…

— Margaret Atwood

In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find…

— Robert Penn Warren

Biographies never feel as real as the best fiction. There is such a discontinuity between the narrative and the material it comes from, which…

— Janet Malcolm

The fiction is not autobiographical. Maybe to some extent it is, of course.

— Paul Auster

The fact is fiction is always a representation of life, sometimes the lives of famous people.

— Varley O'Connor

A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'

— Joyce Carol Oates