Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.

It is difficult to write about a real person.

The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

The hard part of intellectual life is separating what is true from what will get you liked.

Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in the subway slot-machine? How brutally you spoke when you were angry? How Nature rode you with a busy spur? How you fell on your knees late at night?

Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.

So hard is it to discover the truth, because the history of past ages is rendered difficult by the lapse of time; while in contemporary history the truth is always obscured, either by private spite and hatred, or by a desire to curry favour with the chief men of the time.

Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision.

It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

Your biography becomes your biology” — if

<i>But there are harder things than being invisible,</i> it said.