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"I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print, but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion."
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"Discretion is not the better part of biography."

"I've always said, since I got to know him and wrote about him, that he's the generation he least appeals to is his own and I think in many ways he was born middle-aged and that's become apparent in recent years."

"I am a huge admirer of Elizabeth I, and this intriguing biography gives a wonderful picture of the era."

"Isn't that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an 'incoherent succession of images'?"

"Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal's or Faulkner's."

"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing."

"I was so incensed that I was oblivious to all as I ran over broken glass, holding a five-foot weightlifting bar. The glass tore the soles of my feet as I chased the gang's car up the street. I remember breathing heavily as I cursed failing to catch my enemies."

"We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?"
Explore more quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture?But I was doomed to live."

"I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."

"For the first time she knew and loved the Spirit of good and beauty, an affinity to which affords the greatest bliss that our nature can receive."

"It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of it's own reason."

"What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.- The Evil Eye."

"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?"

"When tenderness softened her heart, and the sublime feeling of universal love penetrated her, she found no voice that replied so well to hers as the gentle singing of the pines under the air of noon, and the soft murmurs of the breeze that scattered her hair and freshened her cheek, and the dashing of the waters that has no beginning or end."

"I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation, but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."
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