Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labour and sacrifices made.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
The biography of a writer – or even the autobiography – will always have this incompleteness.
—V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British Novelist, Short-story Writer
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–89) American Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic
It isn’t that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history’s meaning.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
—Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005) English Children’s Books Writer, Biographer, Author, Radio Personality
The course of life is unpredictable… no one can write his autobiography in advance.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72) American Jewish Rabbi
When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven-league boots.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
—Federico Fellini (1920–93) Italian Filmmaker
I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
This work somehow awakened my dormant powers of will and I began to practice self-control. At first my resolutions faded like snow in April, but in a little while I conquered my weakness and felt a pleasure I never knew before — that of doing as I willed.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
My Turn is the distilled bathwater of Mrs. Reagan’s life. It is for the most part sweetish, with a tart edge of rebuke, but disappointingly free of dirt or particulate matter of any kind.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.
—Steven Wright (b.1955) American Comedian, Actor, Writer
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor