Stacy Schiff Quotes

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be.

My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.

Biography is, simply, the orphan of academia.

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.

Insofar as there is an anxiety of influence for a biographer, it may be that each new book is undertaken in reaction to the previous book.

The difference between authorized and unauthorized biographies is the difference between riding in carriage or squatting in steerage.

I had lost faith in biography.

If you know anything about writing biographies, or what is regarded as a good biography, you have minimum input from the person you are writing about.

I read a lot of biographies, and so much is just so boring or so, like, 'Why did you say that?'

I hate biographies which say, I was called to such and such an office, and he offered me so and so, and I got so and so money. I find that very tedious. The best biographies are written by other people.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go to college and have a career - as well as a family - of my own. Both my parents, but especially my mother, encouraged me and led me to believe that it was possible.

I'm an avid biography reader.

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

If you look at my career, I've never gone to a team that had fulfilled their potential.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

If you knew what you wanted to be when you were 6 years old - great! If you have no idea what you want to be, that's OK!

I wanted to be a lot of things in my life.

You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.

Obviously my career's important to me and I'm really, really passionate about trying to keep it.

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

I am a huge fan of biographies. What I'm always looking for is a story. I want a story I have never heard from anyone else.

I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history - in fact, she had been thrashed out.

Sometimes if biography is too head-on, it can feel too obvious.

I thought I would be a sports announcer. All I was was a curious kid who wanted to be on the radio.

When I left high school - I was younger than my classmates, just 17 - I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I thought, 'When I go to college, I'd rather study something else.'