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.

Great writing can be done in biography history art.

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.

For one who reads there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived for fiction biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world in all periods of time.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

Read no history: nothing but biography for that is life without theory.

My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.