Is the biographer an artist who can and should exist on equal terms with the dramatist, fiction writer and poet? The short and robust answer is, 'Certainly not.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm not a biographer, I'm a novelist.
If technique is of no interest to a writer, I doubt that the writer is an artist.
I have always been averse to theorizing about the art or craft of biography. Like Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, who offers the cautionary analogy of the biographical centipede unsure of her next step because of too much cerebration, I have made it my practice to let the facts find the theory.
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
We want a world with both historians and novelists, don't we? Not with one or the other. Every fiction writer crosses the line that divides artistry and documentation - or erases it.
The real biographies of poets are like those of birds, almost identical - their data are in the way they sound. A poet's biography lies in his twists of language, in his meters, rhymes, and metaphors.
No opposing quotes found.