#biography

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

#decide #dim #fiction #i #i write

There is no there there. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#autobiography #carol-blue #edward-said #georgetown-washington #heterosexuality

WE ARE the PULSE of the TIMES! ↗

— Carrie White

#biography #carrie-white #carrie-white-hairdresser #inspirational #literature

It seems to me that someone must surely take the hint and write the life of Miss McGeeney, the woman who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of the man who wrote the biography of Boswell. ↗

— Nathanael West

#boswell #dreams

Awake, my soul! Why should I give hours and days any longer to the vain world, when there is such a world of misery at my very door? Lord, put thine own strength in me; confirm every good resolution; forgive my past long life of uselessness and folly. ↗

— Andrew Bonar

#christianity #forgiveness

The memoirs of call girls are much in demand these days - a millennial craze. ↗

— Dimitra Ekmektsis

#dimitra-ekmektsis #memoir #quotes-i-love #love

Detta är en sann historia - men ändå inte helt sanningsenlig. I verkligheten var allt mycket värre... ↗

— Birgitta Andersson

#men

Sit back, enjoy the ride and hang out with me for a little while. ( sorry, cheesy driving metaphor!) ↗

— Miley Cyrus

#miley-cyrus #metaphor

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time. ↗

— Louis L'Amour

#fiction #history #inexhaustible #limit #lived