Zitat des Tages über Biographien / Biographies:
That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end.
I'm interested in the truth, and unauthorized biographies are not. Yes, I would like to correct those errors someday.
The best interviews like the best biographies should sing the strangeness and variety of the human race.
Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false... In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.
When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amazing: They are human.
I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.
I like a good fun chick-lit book as much as I like historical fiction, mysteries, or biographies, I like to be well-rounded!
I hate biographies which say, I was called to such and such an office, and he offered me so and so, and I got so and so money. I find that very tedious. The best biographies are written by other people.
I research the role, and if it's a literary character, I read the book, and if it's an historical figure, I research documents and biographies. If it's a fictional character, I work off the script.
Along with all those books about Lincoln, Obama might read some biographies of Napoleon. The general who established the Legion d'Honneur understood that people fought as much for medals as for morals.
I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I've worked out why this is - unsociable hours, plus general creativity.
I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.
After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.
There are biographies, I looked at a lot of photographs of him, I heard his voice over and over and over again. You get in there and get to know the man by all of those pieces of information.
There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened.
I've been a lifelong horror fan, but at the same time, I would say 90 percent of my reading is biographies and nonfiction history.
I used to devour biographies of people like Natalie Wood and Marilyn.
While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.
Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.
At the Sex Institute in Bloomington, Indiana, they were a phenomenal help, too. We went out there for a few days, and they gave us access to materials. And the biographies, there are four or five, ranging from very poor to excellent.
There's been a number of erroneous biographies, articles and so on written about Billy and we both thought it would be a good idea to produce a true one.
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
I used to drive around looking at the big houses, wondering how they got there. I used to love biographies about successful business people, wondering how they got there. You start to realize that if they can do it, I can do it.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.
I read everything, but generally more fact than fiction - especially autobiographies and biographies. I've read 'Long Walk to Freedom' by Nelson Mandela at least twice on holiday. Every time, I'm totally awed by his vision, strength and forgiveness. I feel honoured to have got to know him and his wonderful wife Graca over the years.
My father was highbrow: writing long biographies of Dante and stuff like that. Ghostwriting sportsman memoirs? That was sort of the lowest of the low.
The immense majority of human biographies are a gray transit between domestic spasm and oblivion.
I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into.
In a fit at the bookstore one day, I bought all my favourite composers' biographies: Schubert, Massenet, Wolf. I've still not had a chance to read them; it breaks my heart. But when you travel so much, you just can't take that many books with you.
The difference between authorized and unauthorized biographies is the difference between riding in carriage or squatting in steerage.
With literary biographies, you're either shelved with other biographies or next to your subject's fiction.
We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.
I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
I love being in the archives, traveling, sitting in dusty places and looking at books with brittle pages. I love reading biographies and researching, to make myself informed about whatever political or historical time I'm writing about. From there, a lot of the emotional truths about my characters emerge.
My father always read obituaries to me out loud, not because he was maudlin or morbid, but because they were mini biographies.
