In biography, you have your little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and think and fit them together, this way and that.  Robert Louis Stevenson – Author of Treasure Island.

 

 

In biographies for young readers, I try to include two types of details.  One, are those that are crucial to history.  The second are the details that for me define the subject. David Adler – Author of numerous biographies for children.

 

Geography is about maps, but biography is about chaps. Eric Bentley – American critic and playwright

 

I think biography can be more personal than fiction, and certainly can be more expressive.  Peter Ackroyd – English biographer, novelist and critic.   

 

When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography – Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Charles Lindbergh, my pantheon of favorite heroes. Then I would write my own things and sew them together and try to make my own book.  Douglas Brinkley – American author and professor of history at Rice University.

 

I’m an avid biography reader.  Brent Spiner – Data from Star Trek – Next Generation

 

I discovered in writing the biography of Bill Clinton that it is actually easier to write a biography of someone who is dead.  Although you can’t interview them, you have a fuller perspective on their whole life after they’re gone and people are more willing to talk about them.  David Maraniss – Author and Associate Editor of The Washington Post.