Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.
You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
[in a library in 1955] Doc: [reading a short biography about Buford Tannen] "Buford Tannen was a notorious gunman, whose short temper and a tendency to drool, earned him the nickname 'Mad Dog.' He was quick on the trigger and bragged that he'd killed 12 men, not including Indians or Chinamen." Marty McFly: Does it mention me? Am I one of the 12? Doc: [Puts up his finger] Just a minute. "However, this can not be substantiated since precise records were not kept after Tannen shot a newspaper editor who printed an unfavorable story about him in 1884." That's why we can't find anything. Marty McFly: [Brings over a set of books] Look. "William McFly and family." Your relatives? Marty McFly: My great grandfather's name was William. [Points to William] Doc: That's him, good looking guy. Marty McFly: Maybe it was just a mistake, Doc. Maybe that grave wasn't yours. There could've been another Emmett Brown back in 1885. Doc: No. Marty McFly: Did you have a relatives here back then? Doc: The Browns didn't come to Hill Valley until 1908. Then, they were the Von Brauns. My father changed our name during the first World War. Marty McFly: [discovers a picture of Doc] Doc, look. Doc: Great Scott. It's me! Then, it *is* true. All of it. It is me who goes back there and gets shot. Marty McFly: It's not gonna happen, Doc. After you fix the time circuits and put new tires on the DeLorean, I'm gonna go back to 1885 and I'm bringing you home.
Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts. (in Athenaeum, December 1923)
[first lines] George Hayden: Ha ha ha ha ha. Come on Charlie stop messing about, we really have to get down to it now. I just hope our friendship survives the day, that's all. Charlie Chaplin: Ha George, don't be so melodramatic. George Hayden: Well it's your autobiography Charlie. And as your editor I have to tell you that parts of the manuscript are pretty vague, to say the least. I mean for instance, your mother. Now when did she first loose control? We need to know those facts. Charlie Chaplin: It's hard to say. She could be so wonderful, on good days...
You Determine your own worth not anyone else, only yourself.
So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.
I turned to books for comfort. (Former First Lady, Laura Bush)
It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is
I can claim copyright only in myself, and occasionally in those who are either dead or have written about the same events, or who have a decent expectation of anonymity, or who are such appalling public shits that they have forfeited their right to bitch.
Valerie: I know there's no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care, I am me. My name is Valerie, I don't think I'll live much longer and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography ill ever write, and god, I'm writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985, I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tuttlebrook, and she use to tell me that god was in the rain. I passed my 11th lesson into girl's grammar; it was at school that I met my first girlfriend, her name was Sara. It was her wrists. They were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that is was an adolescent phase people outgrew. Sara did, I didn't. In 2002 I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn't have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn't look at me, he told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I had only told them the truth, was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free. I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I starred in my first film, "The Salt Flats". It was the most important role of my life, not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again. We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew Scarlet Carsons for me in our window box, and our place always smelled of roses. Those were there best years of my life. But America's war grew worse, and worse. And eventually came to London. After that there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone. I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like collateral and rendition became frightening. While things like Norse Fire and The Articles of Allegiance became powerful, I remember how different became dangerous. I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I've never cried so hard in my life. It wasn't long till they came for me.It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses, and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An Inch, it is small and it is fragile, but it is the only thing the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie
Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam.
I learned to read at a young age and I have always read voraciously. It is one of the few things, aside from getting fucked up and getting in trouble, that I have done consistently throughout my entire life.
... A man's wife can hold him devilish uneasy, if she begins to scold and fret, and perplex him, at a time when he has a full load for a railroad car on his mind already.
I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a man-eater. The length of road immediately in front of me was brilliantly lit by the moon, but to right and left the overhanging trees cast dark shadows, and when the night wind agitated the branches and the shadows moved, I saw a dozen tigers advancing on me, and bitterly regretted the impulse that had induced me to place myself at the man-eater's mercy. I lacked the courage to return to the village and admit I was too frightened to carry out my self-imposed task, and with teeth chattering, as much from fear as from cold, I sat out the long night. As the grey dawn was lighting up the snowy range which I was facing, I rested my head on my drawn-up knees, and it was in this position my men an hour later found me fast asleep; of the tiger I had neither heard nor seen anything. - The Champawat Maneater
I knew it was coming. I knew they didn't have the nerve. Three days in and they've got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci-fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation.
You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture. You've got to become them.
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had
Tout est question d'
Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.
(Henry Tilney)
For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.
To read, or not to read....that is the question!
Dialogue in the works of autobiography is quite naturally viewed with some suspicion. How on earth can the writer remember verbatim conversations that happened fifteen, twenty, fifty years ago? But 'Are you playing, Bob?' is one of only four sentences I have ever uttered to any Arsenal player (for the record the others are 'How's the leg, Bob?' to Bob Wilson, recovering from injury the following season; 'Can I have your autograph, please?' to Charlie George, Pat Rice, Alan Ball and Bertie Mee; and, well, 'How's the leg, Brian?' to Brian Marwood outside the Arsenal club shop when I was old enough to know better) and I can therefore vouch for its absolute authenticity.
I'm not reclusive at all. Just private.
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.
I looked around at the rooms that I did not see as rooms but more as a landscape for my emotions, a biography of memory.
Whatever our official pieties, deep down we all believe in lives. The sternest formalists are the loudest gossips, and if you ask a cultural-studies maven who believes in nothing but collective forces and class determinisms how she came to believe in this doctrine, she will begin to tell you, eagerly, the story of her life.
He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me.
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
I never ever thought that I was a giggler. I was the one who could hold it together but I didn't on this... - Ashley Jensen
2 - people who like it Add to favorite
They're not clothes that Ashley would wear. But the thing is, you can't stand out. At first I thought, ... - Ashley Jensen
1 - people who like it Add to favorite
I know what I look like. I'm not a babe who's automatically going to be the leading-lady type. I think ... - Ashley Jensen
0 - people who like it Add to favorite
Wow, that's a lot. Basically I have been trying to build a career for myself. I learned early on what to... - Alana Evans
The only person who beat me was Jenna Jameson and that kicks ass.... - Alana Evans
I've learned to think in terms of having a long career. Actors can have very long careers that last unti... - Bryce Dallas Howard
