In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fiction parts should be printed in red ink, the fact parts in black ink.

More from Catherine Drinker Bowen

• Chamber music — a conversation between friends.
• For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
• Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.
• I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more, as I grown older.
• Will the reader turn the page?
• Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them.