Philip Guedalla Quotes

I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person's life.

Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

I would be the worst person on earth to be called to write an account of someone else's life.

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

I see myself as writing biographies, the complete story of someone's life.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

There are two types of stories: public and private.

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

I'm an avid biography reader.

Autobiography is a genre notorious for falsehood.

A book is either autobiography or a novel.

I told my whole life story in my book.

Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.

This is the best biography by me I have ever read.

There is properly no history; only biography.

Biography is the best history.

My 'Report to Greco' is not an autobiography.

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That's what you could say about it.

I have no plans to write an autobiography, I will leave that to others. I'm sure they will turn me into a homosexual or a Nazi spy or something else.

I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction.

Biography is the best form of history.

Biography is, simply, the orphan of academia.

Yes, I have two books that are about me: one of them I wrote, and the other one was written about me. One of my books, which is called 'Spying on Miss Muller,' is really about me even though it's a novel. My autobiography is called 'Once Upon a Time.'

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.

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.