Nina Bawden Quotes

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 never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.

I think at the age of 50, everyone should write their own autobiography.

'Blue Plate Special' is the autobiography of my first half-century of life, with food as the subject.

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.

I believe there's only one autobiography you can do.

Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.

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.

I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me.

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.

People ask me if I am going to write my memoirs. But even if I wanted to, I would not be able. I have extremely few memories.

One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

I told my whole life story in my book.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

Only if I reach 100 years old will I write a very complete autobiography. Not before.

In many ways, I've been writing personal stories all my life.

I feel autobiographies should be written when you're retiring and there's so much to talk about as you've been working for so many years then. It becomes more interesting and there's more material to go in the autobiography.

You write an autobiography because you want to tell people how you felt about a certain matter at that time.

Memoir is a difficult literary form to pull off when dealing with discrete and poignant moments in a life, even harder when seeking to narrate over 80 years of existence.

People have asked me about doing an autobiography, but I don't think my life is that interesting.

There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.