A Quote by Doris Lessing

Once I read autobiography as what the writer thought about his or her life. Now I think, 'This is what they thought at that time'. An interim report - that is what an autobiography is.
An interim report - that is what an autobiography is.
Such reproductions may not interest the reader; but after all, this is my autobiography, not his; he is under no obligation to read further in it; he was under none to begin. A modest or inhibited autobiography is written without entertainment to the writer and read with distrust by the reader.
I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.
Traditional autobiography has generally had a poor press. The novelist Daphne du Maurier condemned all examples of this literary form as self-indulgent. Others have quipped that autobiography reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.
I love to read autobiographies. [What is your favorite autobiography?] the autobiography of Coach John Wooden. Everybody has a struggle so it's about seeing how they overcome it and be the best they can.
I always thought of writing as public, I never thought of writing a diary. I had been struck by, jolted by things I had read, and I wanted to do the same to others. I don't think it ever was the notion of an autobiography; I skipped that phase totally, I think.
I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.
I always think about Katharine Graham - she was the publisher of The Washington Post. In her autobiography she talks about the way her parents met. Her father was, I think, in New York just walking by on his way home and looked into a store and saw the lady that became his wife. It was just pure luck. And she said that it once again reminds her of the role that luck and chance play in our life. I really believe that, too.
This sounds like my autobiography, but I thought this would be a good time to sound off about myself, as I think that I have been silent too long about my views and opinions.
I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.
If you publish Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, no one will read it but if it's Madhuri Dixit's or Madhubala's autobiography people will come and read it.
Tina Fey's autobiography is very, very funny and very well written. It's her life story: it's about how she grows up in New York. There's no obvious reason why I should enjoy this - I mean, this is the autobiography of a woman in her early 40s in New York. I'm a guy from a small town in Denmark.
I was going to write an autobiography once. I started writing it, and then I thought, 'No, let them dig around when I'm dead.'
I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I’d think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend’s lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass’s was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.
My grandfather started his autobiography before he died; he never finished it. I would like to finish his autobiography because I finished mine.
Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.
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