All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) British Historian, Poet, Critic
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
—Roald Dahl (1916–90) British Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Versifier
I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
That which resembles most living one’s life over again, seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it; and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.
—Franklin P. Jones
Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do—well, that’s Memoirs.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it’s a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
—Jonathan Lethem (b.1964) American Novelist, Essayist
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Essayist, Physician
I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.
—Steven Wright (b.1955) American Comedian, Actor, Writer
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 (1941–2022) American Social Critic, Essayist
An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
—Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005) English Children’s Books Writer, Biographer, Broadcaster
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
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
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.
—Henry Kissinger (b.1923) American Diplomat, Academician
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
Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night… shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
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
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
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 in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
I don’t think anybody should write his autobiography until after he’s dead.
—Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) Polish-born American Film Producer, Businessperson
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
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
—Federico Fellini (1920–93) Italian Filmmaker
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
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