Leon Edel

The answer to old age is to keep one's mind busy and to go on with one's life as if it were interminable. I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was dying of tuberculosis.

The biographer who writes the life of his subject's self-concept passes through a fade into the inner house of life.

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.

It's an ear job, not an eye job.

To the biographer all lives bar none are dramatic constructions.