Behind Quote by H. W. Brands

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat…

— Simon Schama

There is no real escape from autobiography into biography. The self has to be faced, or we die.

— Fay Weldon

“I rarely remember the names or faces of nonfictional people”

— Chuck Klosterman

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

— Antonia Fraser

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

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

— A. S. Byatt

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the…

— Rebecca West

There seems to be a tremendous desire among many people now to know authors and how they work, to know what's autobiographical and what…

— Alice Mattison

The best biographies leave their readers with a sense of having all but entered into a second life and of having come to know…

— Mary Cable

I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.

— Joe Eszterhas

Memoirs are a well-known form of fiction.

— Frank Harris

I think people dismiss celebrity memoirs as unreal, contrived and maybe partially made up. But that's definitely not true for anything that I write.

— Hilary Liftin