Activity Quote by Claire Tomalin

Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.

— Catherine Drinker Bowen

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an…

— Jean Fritz

For years and years I carried these notebooks around with me - I had hundreds of pages of notes, these fragments that consisted of…

— Kate Zambreno

I included receipts, faxes, newspaper clippings, all sorts of things. I've read novels composed entirely of emails or letters, but not assembled across this…

— Brian Pinkerton

I've always been steady on and off keeping diaries and journals. I try to document everything so I can remember it the older I…

— Meaghan Jette Martin

I try to find clues in the documented record - from the subject's own testimony, from the testimony of other people. When you're writing…

— Russell Freedman

You can tell a lot about a person by their handwriting.

— Pete Doherty

There’s a level at which words are spirit and paper is skin. That’s the fascination of archives. There’s still a bodily trace.

— Susan Howe

Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses…

— Arthur Golden

To me, reading through old letters and journals is like treasure hunting. Somewhere in those faded, handwritten lines there is a story that has…

— Sara Sheridan

The whole point of diaries is that other people find them and read what you've put. I did once take to writing my inner…

— Helen Fielding

When you're a biographer, you want to explore the very things that your subject didn't care to talk about.

— Ron Chernow