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I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false... In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.

I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again.

I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.

I hate biographies which say, I was called to such and such an office, and he offered me so and so, and I got so and so money. I find that very tedious. The best biographies are written by other people.