Response to a would be biographer in 1980, as quoted in "When Stephen met Sylvia" in The Guardian (24 April 2004) http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1201328,00.html <br class="br">Context: I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me — and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead.
“I guess I should have written two books of my life, one for the adults and another for the kids.”
Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player
Speaking shortly before his death, as quoted in "Sports of the Times: Down Memory Lane with the Babe" by Arthur Daley, The New York Times ((August 18, 1948), p. 32
“In a weak moment, I have written a book.”
Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist
“I have written this book to discharge a debt.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian
Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xv
Context: I have written this book to discharge a debt. For eleven years I was pastor among the working people on the West Side of New York City.... I have never ceased to feel that I owe help to the plain people who were my friends. If this book in some far-off way helps to ease the pressure that bears them down and increases the forces that bear them up, I shall meet the Master of my life with better confidence.
“I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet
"Letter of 1607", as cited by Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 2012, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, p. 218.
Cleon.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist
As quoted in "Ba Jin", obituary in The Times (25 October 2005) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article582233.ece?print=yes&randnum=1195994894125
“I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
Source: The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One: 1915-1919
“I have written a book with Jacob Laksin about universities called One Party Classroom.”
David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer
Among other things, the title highlights the fact that so-called liberals have purged American faculties of conservative voices. It has been the most successful witch-hunt in American history.
[David, Horowitz, http://townhall.com/columnists/davidhorowitz/2009/05/04/the_threat_at_home, "The Threat at Home", townhall.com, July 31, 2006, 2014-21-06]
2009
D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer
In biography of Gopal Krishna Gokhale in page=25
D.V. Gundappa,Sahitya Akademi
