“Every artist writes his own autobiography.”
The New Spirit
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H. Havelock Ellis 31
British physician, writer, and social reformer 1859–1939Related quotes
Just after completing his second autobiography, as quoted in The Marx Brothers: A Bio-bibliography (1987) by Wes D. Gehring, p. 137
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his picture.”
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)
“I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead.”
Quoted in Arthur Marx, Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth (1976), prologue
“Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography.”
The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)
Context: Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography. What should be emphasized? Just what is of general interest? It is advisable, above all, to write honestly and dispense with any of the conventional introductory protestations of modesty. For if one is called upon to tell about one's life so as to make the events that made it what it became useful to the general public, it can mean only that one must have already wrought something positive in life, accomplished a task that people recognize. Accordingly it is a matter of forgetting that one is writing about oneself, of making an effort to abjure one's ego so as to give an account, as objectively as possible, of one's life in the making and of one's accomplishments.
"An Interview with Mr. John Dos Passos," New York Times, Nov 23 1941
“The artist creates his own elite, and the elite its own artists.”
Source: Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
