[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.

I believe, not theoretically, but from direct personal experience, that very few of the things that happen to us are purposeless or accidental (and this includes suffering and grief - even that of others), and that sometimes one catches a glimpse of the link between these happenings. I believe - even when I am myself blind and deaf, or even indifferent - in the existence of a mystery.

The biographer's real business - if it is not too arrogant to say so - is simply this: to bring the dead to life.

I write because, exacting as it may be to do so, it is still more difficult to refrain, and because - however conscious of one's limitations one may be - there is always at the back of one's mind an irrational hope that this next book will be different: it will be the rounded achievement, the complete fulfilment. It never has been: yet I am still writing.

[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.

I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject.

whereas in childhood ... it was the parents' judgement that mattered to the child, later on the situation becomes reversed: it is then that the opinions of one's grown-up children become what matters, as well as their kindness.