A Quote by Iris Origo
I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject.
Related Quotes
The late Tom Wicker's biography of Nixon, called 'One of Us,' is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn't expected to feel.
I want to write for people that are trying to do some kind of quality music. What I mean by quality music is not so much the trend, what is hot right now. I don't write trendy, I write what feels good and something that feels good will never get old. Timeless music is what I try to shoot for.
I can write songs, but I'm not gonna really feel good about the song unless it feels like me, and I'm not gonna release a song or put it on an album or play it in concert unless it really feels like me.
To read and to write. Some writers have to be told to write. They think their job is to meet agents and have experiences and they can just be rich and famous. Their job is to write. Some really don't realize that. And you can't write unless you read.
This is a glorious biography ... The time is ripe for a new biography of Edith Wharton of this intimacy and on this scale ... Lee the biographer pursues her subject down every winding corridor, into every hidden passage and dark corner ... Her critical exploration of Edith Whartons work is dazzlingly assured ... A feat of exhaustive research, and finely tuned to Whartons creative achievement at the same time ... [Wharton] could scarcely have failed to be impressed by ... its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception.
It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.
We're artists. We cry out to be exploited on some level. Write a dissertation on my work. Write a biography about me.
My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. I think figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject, but I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time.
I can't really write unless I'm full of inspiration. And even then I can't write unless I have some alone time.
When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.
I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.
Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.
Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs.
Biography always has fulfiled this role. Robinson Crusoe is a biography, as is Tom Jones. You can go through the whole range of the novel, and you will find it is biography. The only difference between one example and the other is that sometimes it's a partial biography and sometimes it's a total biography. Clarissa, for example, is a partial biography of Clarissa and a partial biography of Lovelace. In other words, it doesn't follow Lovelace from when he is in the cradle, though it takes him to the grave.
I won't write about a subject unless I've mastered it.
Related Authors
Asahel Nettleton Quotes
American
Biographer
Elizabeth Aston Quotes
English
Biographer
Gene Lees Quotes
Canadian
Biographer
George Earle Buckle Quotes
English
Biographer
James Parton Quotes
American
Biographer
Jon Lee Anderson Quotes
Afghani
Biographer
Lord David Cecil Quotes
British
Biographer
Marva Collins Quotes
American
Biographer
Nancy Milford Quotes
American
Biographer
Peter Padfield Quotes
British
Biographer
Rob Pruitt Quotes
American
Biographer
T. J. Stiles Quotes
American
Biographer
William Mackergo Taylor Quotes
American
Biographer