151 Quotes by Stacy Schiff

When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.'

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version.

For thousands of years, men have written history, so it seems to me that most of what we've read is from the male point of view.

Have you ever been married? Had that thing of someone calling you by a name not your own? It's unsettling. It's like a fictitious person.

I think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched.

Women enjoyed rights in Egypt they would not again enjoy for more than 2,000 years. They owned ships, ran vineyards, filed lawsuits, practiced medicine. Their husbands supported them after divorce. Their power was unprecedented.

You ever try to leave New York? I did once. I lasted about a year.

The biographer has two lives: The one she leads, and the one she ultimately understands.

No biographical subject is ever on hold with the orthodontist. If there's a dry spell, it's your job to curtail or eliminate it.