It is in this impossibility of attaining to a synthesis of the inner life and the outward that the inferiority of the biographer t...o the novelist lies. The biographer quite clearly sees Peel, say, seated on his bench while his opponents overwhelm him with perhaps undeserved censure. He sees him motionless, miserable, his head bent on his breast. He asks himself: "What is he thinking?" and he knows nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In France it is rude to let a conversation drop; in England it is rash to keep it up. No one there will blame you for silence. Whe...n you have not opened your mouth for three years, they will think: "This Frenchman is a nice quiet fellow." Be modest. An Englishman will say, "I have a little house in the country"; when he invites you to stay with him you will discover that the little house is a place with three hundred bedrooms. If you are a world tennis-champion, say, "Yes, I don't play too badly." If you have crossed the Atlantic alone in a small boat, say, "I do a little sailing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »