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Autobiography 

see also Biography
  1. An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.
    Quentin Crisp 1908–99 English writer: The Naked Civil Servant (1968) ch. 29
  2. He made the books and he died.
    his own ‘sum and history of my life’
    William Faulkner 1897–1962 American novelist: letter to Malcolm Cowley, 11 February 1949
  3. I should be trading on the blood of my men.
    refusing an offer to write his memoirs
    Robert E. Lee 1807–70 American Confederate general: attributed, perhaps apocryphal
  4. To write one's memoirs is to speak ill of everybody except oneself.
    Henri Philippe Pétain 1856–1951 French soldier and statesman: in Observer 26 May 1946
  5. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.
    J. D. Salinger 1919–2010 American novelist and short-story writer: The Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 1
  6. Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
    Evelyn Waugh 1903–66 English novelist: A Little Learning (1964)
  7. A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin.
    E. B. White 1899–1985 American humorist: letter to Corona Machemer, 11 June 1975