Autobiography

All fiction may be autobiography, but all autobiography is of course fiction.

— Autobiography

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

— Autobiography

Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. [...] 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.

— Autobiography

A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.

— Autobiography

Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.

— Autobiography

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.

— Autobiography

All autobiography is self-indulgent.

— Autobiography

I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead.

— Autobiography

An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' – it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.

— Autobiography

Autobiography is now as common as adultery and hardly less reprehensible.

— Autobiography

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this Narrative shall contain little more than the History of my Writings; as, indeed, almost all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first success of most of my writing was not such as to be an object of vanity.

— Autobiography

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.

— Autobiography

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.

— Autobiography

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

— Autobiography

Autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two.

— Autobiography

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 analyse 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.

— Autobiography

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

— Autobiography

I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery, and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.

— Autobiography

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering, which, however, is, no doubt, the true explanation of their popularity, as the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

— Autobiography