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 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
A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
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
Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one’s own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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
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
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
—Federico Fellini (1920–93) Italian Filmmaker
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) British Historian, Poet, Critic
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
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
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
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
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Essayist, Physician
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
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
Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
—Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005) English Children’s Writer, Biographer, Broadcaster
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
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
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
All autobiography is self-indulgent.
—Daphne du Maurier (1907–89) British Novelist, Playwright
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