A Quote by Lloyd Alexander

Story, finally, is humanity's autobiography.

Lloyd Alexander

Quote Topics

Autobiography Finally Humanity Story

Quote Author

Lloyd Alexander
American - Writer
January 30, 1924 - May 17, 2007

Most people who read the autobiography perceive the narrative as a story that now millions of people know, and it was - it's a story of human transformation, the powerful epiphany, Malcolm's X journey to Mecca, his renunciation of the Nation of Islam's racial separatism, his embrace of universal humanity, of humanism that was articulated through Sunni Islam. Well, that's the story everybody knows.

Manning Marable

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

Salman Rushdie

Literature in its most comprehensive sense is the autobiography of humanity.

Bernard Berenson

If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.

Lorrie Moore

I thought my story was over. But that was when I realised I finally had a story to tell - and it seems to remind people of their own story.

Fantastic Negrito

I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic. There's a point after the industrial period where it seems like humanity's finally going to make it right. There were advances in medicine and technology and education. People are going to be able to live longer lives; literacy is starting to spread. It seemed like finally, after centuries of toiling and misery, that humanity was going to get to a better stage. And then what happens is precisely the contrary. Humanity betrays itself.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

To me, as a director and an actor, that's the main thing. "What's the heart of this story? What's the humanity of this story? And if the movie doesn't have it, then why am I watching it?" Even if it's a silly comedy, like Superbad or Knocked Up - Judd Apatow, I love, because he's all about heart. The humor comes out of the humanity.

Tim Matheson

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

Sidney Poitier

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.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

The reason why I began making quilts is because I wrote my autobiography in 1980 and couldn't get it published because I wanted to tell my story, and my story didn't appear to be appropriate for African-American women.

Faith Ringgold

I got out of autobiography because my story is, I was famous, it was hard for me, I got into therapy. I had trouble with food, I got a nutritionist. There's no story there.

Courtney Thorne-Smith

The autobiographer looks at life through the lens of his or her own life and really uses herself or himself as the jumping-off place to examine the social mores and the economic and political climates. In a way, the autobiography becomes history as well as the story of one person, for it becomes the story of a family or the story of the state or nation.

Maya Angelou

I am optimistic that humanity is going to make it, that humanity is going to reach, finally, a new state of consciousness which will then create a different kind of world.

Eckhart Tolle

An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived.

Herbert Samuel

There's something about the authenticity rather than the autobiography that makes my story and my pain move across and become your story and your pain.