Biographical Accuracy Quotes

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

One of these days when I'm finished coaching at Alabama, I'll write an authorized book because there's only one expert on my life, and guess who that is... me. And there won't be any misinformation. There won't be any false statements. There won't be any hearsay. There won't be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.

It's very important to me I get my autobiography out before I die and someone else writes it and screws up my life.

The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic.

I wouldn't want a film to be made on my life, because I suppose I would only want them to show all the good things about me and hide the awful things, and that wouldn't be a very honest biopic, no?

Shakespeare was completely fictionalising the people who were then the great celebrities of English.

If there's anything about someone's life that's important enough to make a movie about it, I have to take responsibility to get all of it right. It's a huge responsibility.

I think of the Bible as an unauthorized biography.

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them.

One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.

It's always written that my father was a rich, conservative John Bircher. That is untrue. He was not rich. He was not a John Bircher.

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

When you're playing a real person, there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.

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

If he makes out Pierce to be either a brave or a great man, then it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote.

A new biography of Madonna came out last week, and apparently the biography lists all the men she's slept with. The book is apparently called the Manhattan Telephone Directory.

My biographers... would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided... to flip the order.

When you read a biography remember that the truth is never fit for publication.

I always thought that the film would be successful if we captured Harvey Milk, like the way Harvey really was-the personality, the humor, the corny bad jokes, all of it.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?'

Obviously, in marketing, the best tool is to show the autobiography in fiction. It's inevitable how that happens, but it's generic. Say I've written a story where my sister dies. 'Well, did your sister die?' No, she did not. But people use those straws to grasp at the difference between reality and fiction.

There's been a number of erroneous biographies, articles and so on written about Billy and we both thought it would be a good idea to produce a true one.

So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.

I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone write an unauthorised biography of me. Half of it is lies and the other half is badly written. My feeling is that if I'm going to write my life story, I ought to have my life first.