The secret of biography resides in finding the link between talent and achievement. A biography seems irrelevant if it doesnt discover the overlap be…

- Leon Edel

Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson lo…

- Leon Edel

The biographer who writes the life of his subjects self-concept passes through a fade into the inner house of life.

- Leon Edel

The answer to old age is to keep one's mind busy and to go on with one's life as if it were interminable. I always admired Chekhov for building a new…

- Leon Edel

Henry James joyously engaged in the act of writing. A good day's writing gave him a sense of strength, of control over chaos, a victory of order and…

- Leon Edel

Any biographer must of necessity become a pilgrim a peripatetic, obsessed literary pilgrim, a traveler with four eyes.

- Leon Edel