Biographers Quote by Iris Origo

“In many ways. . .the completeness of biography, the achievement of its professionalization, is an ironic fiction, since no life can ever be known…

— Ira Bruce Nadel

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

— Voltaire

The novelist is the person who spends a lot of his or her day thinking about the human drama and emotional complexity.

— Thane Rosenbaum

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and…

— Mark Twain

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary…

— Raymond Queneau

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the…

— Robert Hall

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way,…

— Henry Fielding

If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.

— Isaac Asimov

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and…

— William Butler Yeats

Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.

— Richard Cecil

A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably…

— James Branch Cabell