"I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject."

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[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.

— Iris Origo