I don’t like the word ‘autobiography.’ I rather like the term ‘autofiction.’ The second you make a script out of the story of your life, it becomes fictional. Of course, the truth is never far. But the story is created out of it.
I think I do more fiction than autobiography.
I wish I were one of those terribly clever people who, when they write their autobiographies, always say, when I was fifteen months old I distinctly remember my Aunt Fanny saying to me, etc.
I’m also doing a special for Comedy Central called Autobiography. It’s going to be a spoof of Biography.
Albums serve as paragraphs in an artist’s autobiography.
In his new autobiography, ‘Capital Gaines,’ Chip talks about the farm work – and he says he does, in fact, do it himself.
My ‘Report to Greco’ is not an autobiography.
You pick up loads of baggage with your first record with reaction to it from fans and critics. So I went to Ireland by myself for a couple of weeks with my guitar. I read lots of poetry, I read Patti Smith’s autobiography and started words and phrases and then songs started to take shape.
The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time.
I haven’t read any of the autobiographies about me.
I can’t stand these autobiographies that start with, you know, ‘I was born in Acton, and I went to such and such a school.’ They just bore me.
I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.
I believe there’s only one autobiography you can do.
‘Off With Their Heads’ by Frances Marion. I love a showbusiness autobiography – and this one resonates because it’s written by one of the great Hollywood screenwriters.
I do read a lot of autobiographies and biographies but from people who are not in my field – older women, older artists, Miles Davis.
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.
It was a big thing for me to read black writers. ‘Fences,’ by August Wilson. James Baldwin’s ‘Amen Corner.’ ‘The Fire Next Time.’ ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X,’ of course.
Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself.
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.
When you write an autobiography, it has to be authentic.
I always felt ,like, I’ll leave autobiographies to the people who are kind of iconic.
The Mary J. Blige song is called ‘My Life.’ It’s kinda like an autobiography song, stating what I’m about and what I’m trying to do and what I’ve done.
It is important to understand how leaders have adapted and thought about war and warfare across their careers. ‘The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War’ is perhaps the best war memoir ever written.
I wanted to be a movie director. I was just obsessed with watching movies and camera shots and directors. I read autobiographies and stuff of directors.
Everything is autobiography, even if one writes something that is totally objective. The fact that it’s a subject that seizes you makes it autobiographical.
I had said before that I’d never write an autobiography because I’ve been around, and there’s a lot that I’ve seen and heard that stays with me. That’s just mine. I didn’t want to do a kiss-and-tell, as some of my peers have.
When I left the Senate in 1979, there were several publishers who had approached me about writing an autobiography, and I knew that politicians write books for many reasons, but at that time, I just thought I wasn’t ready and my story wasn’t over, and I knew I had a new life ahead of me.
I don’t feel famous and I didn’t want my autobiography to be like a Paris Hilton story.
And then I wrote my first autobiography when I – well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I’ve written about one book every two years.
Growing up, I read all three of Frederick Douglass’ autobiographies by the time I was 12.
There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.
When I was young and easily outraged, I would be upset when every fictional character I created was somehow reduced to ‘autobiography.’
I employed my wife for three years to sit in the attic and type up my autobiography, 700 pages, organise everywhere I go. I’m paying the normal rate of tax on the money I take out for myself.
Obama is a very fine writer with an excellent command of language. His memoir ‘Dreams From My Father’ is a fine book, but it will not rank as one of the great autobiographies.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
I write to be truthful in my songs, which is why I wrote what’s painfully truthful about my life in my autobiography.
It’s a presumptuous thing to write one’s autobiography, but this is really an effort in the deepest sense to explore the struggle of a tortured individual to be himself in a hostile society.
I won’t write my autobiography because I never had an affair with Frank Sinatra, and if I had had, I wouldn’t tell anyone.
I was working on a book about health and wellness, and nobody was interested in that from me. Thankfully, my cowriters reached out and sold me on the idea of doing an autobiography.
‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X.’ I’ve used it to demonstrate racial attitudes to people who I thought needed a better understanding of all human beings. Malcolm was not a racist. He was not looking for revenge. He realized that kindness and goodness did not come from any one kind of person.
A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
I always call ‘Billy Elliot’ a fantasy autobiography because I never wanted to be a dancer, but I got a lot of stick from the other kids about wanting to be a writer and being interested in drama.
A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
I’d never put much thought into writing an autobiography before, because while I have this public persona of being extremely confident, I also am extremely filled with self-doubt, worry and insecurity. This book came about because I was trying to sell another book, unsuccessfully, about health and wellness.
I don’t really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don’t think of them as a memoir. They’re essays; they’re not an autobiography.
When I was writing my autobiography, these songs came up from time to time which were important to me, and I realized that what they really represented was, they’d come from this age of shared music.
When I do read, it tends to be serious books like autobiographies and if I’ve met a famous person, I’ll read up on them.
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
If it is properly done, the ‘as told to’ autobiography represents how the subject wants his story told.
I’ve been asked to write my autobiography, but I’ve not been interested.
An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.
The reason why I began making quilts is because I wrote my autobiography in 1980 and couldn’t get it published because I wanted to tell my story, and my story didn’t appear to be appropriate for African-American women.
In the winter of 2012, as my fiftieth birthday approached, I began to write what turned into my autobiography, a look at my own life through the lens of food.
For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‘Why don’t you write your autobiography?’
When I write my autobiography after 20-25 years, I want 2014 to be the weakest year of my life.
If you take the autobiographies of great sports people, they are almost always the same. They start with zero; they are always ambitious, know what they want to do in life, and have the confidence to do it.
So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I’d better tell my story before other people told it for me.
My father always told me I should be a writer, and I found I loved writing my autobiography; writing is such an interesting process.
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
As a business consultant, I am a voracious reader of self-help books, case studies of thriving companies, and the biographies and autobiographies of the world’s most successful people. I relentlessly implement the best ideas into my businesses.
Ibn Said’s autobiography is an extraordinary work, and his story is one that’s absolutely crucial to tell.
