Why does life need evidence of life?

biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.

each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's.

writers do not choose their subjects; their subjects choose them.

As a seasoned insomniac, I knew sometimes the way to beat sleeplessness was to outwit it: to pretend you didn't care about sleeping. Then sometimes sleep became piqued, like a rejected lover, and crept up to try to seduce you.

I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.