Reading Biographies Quotes:

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

- Benjamin Disraeli

source: Contarini Fleming pt. 1, ch. 23 (1832) See RalphWaldo Emerson 11

topic: Inspirational Life, History, Biographies, My Biography, Reading Biographies

I enjoy reading biographies because I want to know about the people who messed up the world.

- Marie Dressler

topic: Reading, People, World, Messed Up, Reading Biographies

The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.

- Christine Quinn

topic: Dog, Kings, School, My Biography, Reading Biographies

The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.

- Edward Abbey

source: Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.25, RosettaBooks

topic: Reading, Men, Biographies, Reading Biographies

I grew up reading biographies on groups, and I love all that. The thing about biographies, it's the old cliché but it's true - a lot of the time these things are more about the author than they are about the group.

- Stevie Jackson

source: "Belle and Sebastian". Interview with Gretta Cohn, pitchfork.com. March 6, 2006.

topic: Reading, Biographies, Groups, Reading Biographies

The pleasure of reading biography, like that of reading letters, derives from the universal hunger to penetrate other lives.

- Patricia Ann Meyer Spacks

source: Patricia Ann Meyer Spacks (1985). “Gossip”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

topic: Reading, Hunger, Pleasure, Reading Biographies, Pleasure Of Reading

I have always liked reading biographies. It is the ideal literary genre for someone too prim, like me, to acknowledge a gossipy interest in the living - don't you hate gossips, aren't they too awful? - but avid for any nuggets from the private lives of the dead because that is perfectly respectable, an altogether worthy and informative way of spending one's time.

- Jill Tweedie

source: Jill Tweedie (1980). “It's only me: pieces from a column”, Robson Books Limited

topic: Hate, Reading, Avid, Informative, Literary Genre

I always use primary sources, in addition to reading biographies and other materials.

- Nancy Horan

topic: Reading, Use, Biographies, Primary Source, Reading Biographies

I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent to children.

- Joan Didion

source: Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 3, 2006.

topic: Reading Biographies

The reason I moved to Nashville was because I was reading biographies of a lot of my country music heroes, and I thought it would be better to actually go where the history was, as opposed to just reading about it.

- Lindi Ortega

topic: Country, Reading, Hero, Reading Biographies

I love to read different books on completely different subjects at the same time. I cannot focus on one. I read a few pages of literature, then I jump to philosophy and at the same time I'm reading biographies of Mahler.

- Gustavo Dudamel

topic: Philosophy, Book, Reading, Different Books, Mahler