Biography Quotes

[As a very young man, I thought] of Europe as a place that could not exist except in the imagination, in glorious dreams, and through the careful lies of the silver screen.

~ Roman Payne

If you're alive, kick into drive. Chase whimsies. See if you can turn dreams into a way to make a living, if not an entire way of life.

~ Kevin Smith

I could not feel, smell, see, hear, or taste the world around me. If I had allowed myself to experience these things in all their intensity, I might have lost my mind. If I had allowed myself to cry, I might never have been able to stop. So I survived, but I never felt joy, never felt safe.

~ Yeonmi Park

I remember when Elvis died. I wrote my sentiments with words of a little girl in my dear diary, Many people wanted to see his body. They literally wanted to dig his bones out just to make sure that he was being buried. And I could not understand why. Why people could not leave him alone and let his soul rest in peace. I couldn't get it. I didn't grasp it at that time. In a head of a little girl it was hard to believe that there were mysteries to be solved. That there ruled a conspiracy theory that people thought it was odd that he was buried and the casket was never opened. They didn't believe he was dead! Oh yes. Elvis Lives! And as the world needs his songs, his words, his thoughts, his love, his light more than ever before.

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Reading an author's Biography contributes to an understanding and enjoyment of their work, and gives a richness to the reading experience.

~ Suzy Davies

I am Orafoura, but you can call me Jarod Kintz. I’m fairly proud to proclaim that Dora J. Arod has me on her short list of “World’s worst writers.” The list couldn’t get any shorter, because I’m the only name on it. I should tell her to stop calling it a list, and change the title to “World’s worst writer.” If you’re wondering why I rate all my work one star, it’s because the rating system doesn’t have a zero star option, or better yet, go into negative numbers.

~ Orafoura

I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a man-eater. The length of road immediately in front of me was brilliantly lit by the moon, but to right and left the overhanging trees cast dark shadows, and when the night wind agitated the branches and the shadows moved, I saw a dozen tigers advancing on me, and bitterly regretted the impulse that had induced me to place myself at the man-eater's mercy. I lacked the courage to return to the village and admit I was too frightened to carry out my self-imposed task, and with teeth chattering, as much from fear as from cold, I sat out the long night. As the grey dawn was lighting up the snowy range which Iwas facing, I rested my head on my drawn-up knees, and it was in this position my men an hour later found me fast asleep; of the tiger I had neither heard nor seen anything.

~ Jim Corbett

Reading wasn't an attempt to educate myself. It was my chief escape from a world that, although gorgeous in landscape and rich with mountain culture, didn't provide what I needed—the promise of adventure, a life beyond the perimeter of hills. I often fantasized that I'd been adopted and had mysterious powers such as flying or teleportation. Books offered the promise of a world in which misfits like me could flourish. Within the pages of a novel, I was unafraid: of my father, of dogs, snakes, and the bully across the creek; of older boys who drove hot rods close enough to make me jump in the ditch; of armed men parked near the bootlegger.

~ Chris Offutt

We thought speaking in English meant you were more intelligent. We were wrong of course. It does not matter what language you choose, the important thing is the words you use to express yourself.

~ Malala Yousafzai

A bookshelf is a biography written by others.

~ Kat Lehmann

Every old man that dies is a library that burns.

~ Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Now he knew that any memories he might cherish during the last years of his life would be only fictions from a biography he'd never lived.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

It should be some kind of goal to be absolutely clear about your past experiences and have let them all go and accepted them in full.

~ Auliq Ice

In a nutshell, I am not unaware of my failings. Neither am I a stranger to irony.

~ Mordecai Richler

But the truth is, nothing delights me more than a biography of one of the truly great that proves he or she was an absolute shit.

~ Mordecai Richler

The abscess is a distant memory. The pain is gone. This dinner with her hosts and her health-care team, this week of seeing another country and another culture, this time of being in demand, this moment is reality. I am a lucky girl, (Judy) thinks.

~ Shireen Jeejeebhoy

A popular Harvard business professor urged his students to read the obituaries in the New York Times before they read anything else, in order to learn from the lives of great men.

~ Georges F. Doriot

I was born with my eyes turned inward.

~ David Joseph Cribbin

144461I know very little having to do with human beings that doesn't also have to do with connection. We want to be noticed, we want to be good enough, we want friends, and we want to be loved. We want our place to stand.

~ Chris Crutcher

But above all, an author must write passionately and edit passionately.

~ Paul Collins

I've seen so much and lived it all. I  wanted  to  bite   the  earth  and  taste  it.  It  is  both  bitter  and  sweet,  and   if  I  had  my  time  to  live  over  again,  I  wouldn’t  change a  damn  thing —  Reg  Spiers

~ Julie Mcsorley Marcus Mcsorley

This is your first and final chance, your one and only biography.

~ Sarah Hall

The world can accommodate your situation, as it accommodates all situations. And your body will keep explaining to you how it all works, this original experiment, this lifelong gift. Your body will keep describing how, for the first time being at least, there is no escape from this particular vessel. These are your atoms. This is your consciousness. These are your experiences--your successes and mistakes. This is your first and final chance, your one and only biography. This is the existential container, the bowl of your life's soup, wherein something can be made sense of, wherein there is a cure, wherein you are.

~ Sarah Hall

The writer has to die to give birth to the intellectual in the service of the wretched of the earth.

~ Annie Cohen-Solal

Christine did not live, or love, as most people do. She lived boundlessly, as generous as she could be cruel, prepared to give her life at any moment for a worthy cause, but rarely sparing a thought for the many casualties that fell in her wake.

~ Clare Mulley

Who makes things up? Who tells the real story? We all turn our lives into stories. It is a defining characteristic of our species. We retell our experiences. We quickly learn what parts are interesting to our listeners and what parts lag, and we shape our narratives accordingly. It doesn't mean we aren't telling the truth; we've simply learned which parts to leave out. Every time we tell the story again, we don't go back to the original event and start from scratch, we go back to the last time we told the story. It's the story we shape and improve on, we don't change what happened. This is also a way we have of protecting ourselves. It would be too painful to relive a childhood illness or the death of your best friend every time you had to speak of it. By telling the story from the story, instead of from the actual events, we are able to distance ourselves from our suffering. It also gives us the chance to make the story something people can hear.

~ Ann Patchett

There is no history of anything happening until it does.And then there is.

~ Ronda Rousey

Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.

~ Jeffrey Rasley

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

~ Elbert Hubbard

Just because you can, doesn't necessarily mean that you should!

~ Bill Collins

Just because you can, doesn't necessarily mean that you sh

~ Bill Collins

The clown was an evil one. They’re either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter.

~ Chris Thrall

I want to sling a stone, a small rock into a pool, see it ripple. I want to shake a tree, create a small storm..

~ Suzy Davies

The landscape is bathed in the honeyed light of morning. Sometimes the memory of winter comes again. And my days are colored reveries of you, my nights sensuous

~ Suzy Davies

His lone withdrawing figure blended anonymously with the darkness, Dr Raven's quick, light steps becoming gradually distant, drowned out by the clicking staccato rush of trains, the steady drip of rainwater, and the clock of a nearby church as it heralded the hour

~ Suzy Davies

Writing is...creating tattoos which are invisible, under your skin

~ Suzy Davies

She hands me an ornament of The Virgin Mary. Pray to the Holy Mary, Mother of God! I notice she has a gold chain round her neck. It has the holy cross and a shamrock

~ Suzy Davies

View other authors as your allies rather than your competition

~ Shannon Love

Instead of an unhinged lunatic you may glimpse a punctured soul-a mere human being like you.

~ Shannon Love

The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning, and the same ending.

~ Martin Amis