A. Scott Berg Quotes

I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.

Whether in print or other media, a good biography is more than a court record or a stringing together of already familiar sources. It breathes life into the subject.

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting.

Stories are told over time, and so they naturally accrue meanings.

Characters work really well when they're reflective of the times that they're operating in.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

To the biographer all lives bar none are dramatic constructions.

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.

I think I want to write a biography, something with broad appeal, but I haven't figured out about whom.

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

I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.

When you are writing a memoir, you have the advantage of knowing how it all ends. It's just taking your life apart and putting it together again.

There may be a point where I may decide to write an autobiography.

For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction.

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.

I've been asked to write an autobiography, and I've started it a couple of times, on different angles, and maybe one day I will, but you know what? There's time for that because I'd like to have the whole story.

I'm a biographer; I can live with a little hyperbole.

I would like to continue to tell stories of what I did in a biographical way, so I will continue to write.

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.

Biography is the best history.

Personal narrative is one of the few things where people don't get caught up in fighting over esoteric rhetoric.

I believe that sometimes, when we talk about books, we're talking about the big picture - how they're relevant.