Quotes on Biographers

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame it but to extract substance, to identify cause and axiomatic effect. You subsist on the tactical omissions, the hollow words, the oddly unconnected dots.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.