"Biography is to give a man some..." - Quote by Virginia Woolf
Biography is to give a man some kind of shape after his death.
More by Virginia Woolf
“It doesn't have to be the truth, just your vision of it, written down.”
“The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpended the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a fingerprint of a shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.”
“She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.”
More on Biography
“Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
“Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.”
“As for drugs - well, Gates was certainly not unusual there. Marijuana was the pharmaceutical of choice.”
More on Identity
“You have a talent that comes from inside you, from your heart, not your fingers. What you have can’t ever go away. It’s what other people only dream about. You’re an artist.”
“I'm so many people. They shock me sometimes. I wish I was just me! I used to think I was going crazy, until I discovered that some people I admired were like that to.”
“People are less certain of their national identities or their place in the world. It starts looking different and disorienting. And there is no doubt that that has produced populist movements both from the left and from the right in many countries in Europe.”