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epilogue After writing twenty-two lives, I’ve formulated twelve principles of biography. This is how I think lives should be written and what they ought to achieve. 1. Read everything in print and follow up every lead. 2. Be persistent and see everyone who will talk to you. 3. Weigh all the evidence like a lawyer. A biographer is “an artist on oath.” 4. Get the subject born in the first five pages. Nothing is duller than genealogy. 5. Describe the subject’s personal habits and tastes. 6. Portray the minor characters as fully as possible. 7. Illuminate the recurrent patterns of the life. Look at the big picture, not the small details. 8. Keep up the dramatic narrative, employing the same techniques as the novelist, and concentrate on your readers’ interests rather than your own obsessions. 9. Don’t focus on the events of the life, but on what they mean. 10. Be selective rather than exhaustive, analytical rather than descriptive. Aim for four hundred pages and remember that a shorter book, though much harder to write, is easier to read than a long one. 11. Complete the book in a few years, at most, or you will begin to hate the subject for eating up your life. 12. Always remember the responsibility of the biographer to do justice to his subject. ...

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