Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around. — Jean M. Auel
Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more. — Louis L'Amour
As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography. — Norman Spinrad
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders. — Edna O'Brien
The ifs and buts of history...form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet. — Vikram
Short Historical Fiction Quotes
The best fiction is far more true than any journalism. — William Faulkner
History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events. — A. J. P. Taylor
History is a tragedy, not a morality tale. — I. F. Stone
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs. — Carol Tavris
History is the autobiography of a madman. — Alexander Herzen
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. — Rudyard Kipling
[History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the imagination of the living. — William Carlos Williams
The historian amputates reality. — Gaetano Salvemini
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Historical Novels Quotes
After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones. — Lion Feuchtwanger
The historical novel gives us perspective on our modern lives and helps us connect with the story, which we are continuing ourselves. — Mary Pope Osborne
There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog. — Vladimir Nabokov
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present. — Laila Lalami
If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier. — Louis L'Amour
The universe wrote fiction is us. Its called Fear.
However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned. — Helen Dunmore
There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth. — Peter Straub
As far as benefits to reading historical novels, there are several! For one thing, you learn about life in another era. Secondly, these novels help us to develop a deeper understanding of the legacy of women who came before us and the strides made by our ancestors. — Mary Pope Osborne
The novel since its origins has been the privatization of history... the history of private life ... and in that sense every novel is an historical novel. — Jose Emilio Pacheco
Historical Events Quotes
Covering a historic event is perfectly legitimate. It's not sneaking into somebody's boudoir... These people belong to history, and not to record that if you have the opportunity would be wrong. — Elliott Erwitt
When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history. — Charlotte Mary Yonge
The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events. — Arthur Erickson
When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War. — Trevor Nunn
I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject. — Ibrahim Babangida
History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event. — Pinchas Lapide
A complex is a cluster of energy in the unconscious, charged by historic events, reinforced through repitition, embodying a fragment of our personality, and generating a programmed response and an implicit set of expectations. — Carl Jung
History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant — John Barth
I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events. — Steven Pinker
Historical Truth Quotes
The truth is the greatest enemy of the State. — Unknown Author
To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Truth is treason in the empire of lies. — Ron Paul
They must find it difficult ... those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. — Gerald Massey
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place. — Maya Angelou
Truth is not to be found either in traditional capitalism or in Marxism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically, capitalism failed to discern the truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Truth and History. 21 Men. The Boy Bandit King - He Died As He Lived. — Billy the Kid
I am guiding you to seek truth from the facts of the historical conditions of our society and to identify the problems. The correct solutions will come with the correct identification of the problems. — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one. — Reinhold Niebuhr
Fiction Novels Quotes
My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. — Alan Moore
I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas. — Louise Brown
Oh, I’m nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I’m nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I’m working on right now. It’s a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it’s going to be fun. — Billy Campbell
Expand the definition of 'reading' to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It's the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won't read shark books forever. — Jon Scieszka
It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly. — C. J. Cherryh
Babylon 5 is probably the biggest, most ambitious television science fiction series ever made. It's one big novel told over five years with 110 different stories told within it. — Bill Mumy
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying. — Anton Chekhov
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. — William Faulkner
We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something. — Orson Scott Card
If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Great Historical Quotes
An honest public servant can't become rich in politics. He can only attain greatness and satisfaction by service. — Harry S. Truman
A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind. — Grace Lee Boggs
On the eve of this great adventure I send my best wishes to every soldier in the Allied team.
To us is given the honour of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history; and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings. — Bernard Law Montgomery
Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic. — Hu Shih
I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That's a good thing. — Steven Weinberg
I think the whole, like, cultural diversity and the arty side of London is really, really great. And how it's so historic as well. — Lily Allen
[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft. — David Graeber
History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought. — Etienne Gilson
Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art. — Johan Huizinga
I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it. — Jean M. Auel
Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. — Madeline Miller
I feel as if dystopian and utopian representations are historically the most effective way of criticizing modern society. You know, because you don't have to be factually accurate. You can kind of construct some awesome strawman arguments in your fictional world. — Owen Pallett
There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think? — Madeline Miller
I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying. — Anita Diament
I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting. — Antonia Fraser
For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming. — Anthony Doerr
I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. — Henry Cavill
The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation. — Tana French
Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey. — Raymond Queneau
I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history. — Kate Mosse
History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt. — Guy Vanderhaeghe
Science fiction is like a blender - you can put in any historical experience and take influences from everything you see, read or experience. — Joss Whedon
For me, the historical and genealogical library is the one I use. I'm working on, I'll say, it's a time travel novel. I haven't written very much of it. That's the dirty secret of the Cullman center: The writers don't write their fiction there, they just do their research. — Andrew Sean Greer
It's really important in any historical fiction, I think, to anchor the story in its time. And you do that by weaving in those details, by, believe it or not, by the plumbing. — Jacqueline Winspear
My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable. — George Santayana
As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish. — Neil Gaiman
After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours. — Michelle Moran
When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls. — Kathryn Lasky
Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins-that's why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place. — Jennifer Armstrong
I just love historical fiction. — Jennifer Donnelly
As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely around among realism, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy of various kinds, historical fiction, young adult fiction, parable, and other subgenres, to the point where much of it is ungenrifiable, all got shoved into the Sci Fi wastebasket or labeled as kiddilit - subliterature. — Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing historical fiction is a legitimate us of Multiple Personality Disorder. — Peggy Ullman Bell
Writing historical fiction is a legitimate use of Multiple Personality disorder. — Peggy Ullman Bell
The power of story is potent and that's why historical fiction can be an extraordinarily significant way of teaching people logical truth propositions, moves you along, moves your emotions as well as informs your intellect. — Hank Hanegraaff
It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction. — Wendell Berry
People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England. — Hilary Mantel
I read a ton of fiction - historical, contemporary, literary, commercial, I love it all. — Megan Chance
As for whether genre considerations influence what I write, they don't at all, but I might sell more books if they did. The Night Journal is a hodge-podge of historical fiction, western, mystery, and contemporary domestic drama. It doesn't settle into a specific market, reviewers have a hard time describing it, and sometimes it gets classified weirdly in bookstores. But from a writer's standpoint, I like that it's hard to categorize. — Elizabeth Crook
I don't think I have ever created an entire fiction piece or followed a historical piece and made that into a sermon. — Max Lucado
In non-fiction you have to stay true to historical events, be they personal or national . — Andrew Lam
The Forgotten Realms is arguable the most detailed, intricate fantasy setting ever created this side of Middle Earth. It's a setting for many D&D game products and lots of fiction. It is vast, historically and geographically and so contains just about anything you might imagine, at one place or time or another. Created by Ed Greenwood. And, for the record, Ed Greenwood is one of the smartest guys I've ever met. — Paul S. Kemp
Historical fiction is a collaboration between the time in which it's written and the time that it's writing about and the far future, when we don't know what people are going to think about yet. — Emily Barton
Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me as historical documents. Cabet [Icaria's founder and author of the utopian novel, Travels in Icaria], is writing in the 1830s, and his idea of the perfect society reveals a lot about his time. But his book is uniquely bad. — Christine Jennings
I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of. — William Monahan
Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference. — Chang-Rae Lee
If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction? — Don Cheadle
With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonfiction didn't feel all that dramatic - just another half-step to the right. — Debra Dean
As a publisher and author, I'm a big fan of historical fiction and also memoir. — Andrea Davis Pinkney
The problem with kitsch is that it is all too profound, manipulating deep libidinal and ideological forces, while true art knows how to remain at the surface, how to subtract it's subject from it's deepest context of historical reality. The same goes for contemporary art, where we often encounter brutal attempts to return to the Real, to remind the spectator or reader that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from a sweet dream. — Slavoj Žižek
"Hard" science fiction probes alternative possible futures by means of reasoned extrapolations in much the same way that good historical fiction reconstructs the probable past. Even far-out fantasy can present a significant test of human values exposed to a new environment. Deriving its most cogent ideas from the tension between permanence and change, science fiction combines the diversions of novelty with its pertinent kind of realism. — Jack Williamson
Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass "conceptualism" that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context. — Ben Lerner
We're growing up with a very illiterate bunch of children who have somehow been taught that film is fact when, in fact, it's invention. Hopefully, an historical film will inspire people to go and read about the history but in the end it is a work of fiction and selection. As for the armour itself, no it wasn't particularly comfortable. — Cate Blanchett
In Conclusion
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