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
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
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
Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top. — Italo Calvino
Novels aren’t just happy escapes; they are slivers of people’s souls, nailed to the pages, dripping ink from veins of wood pulp. Reading the right one at the right time can make all the difference. — Brandon Sanderson
The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. — Goldwin Smith
It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels. — Aldous Huxley
Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination. — Janet Frame
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual. — Milan Kundera
Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. — Ulysses S. Grant
Distorted history boasts of bellicose glory... and seduces the souls of boys to seek mystical bliss in bloodshed and in battles. — Alfred Adler
Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience. — Thomas Perry
The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty. — Edmund Gosse
Historical Quotes
The truth is the greatest enemy of the State. — Unknown Author
An honest public servant can't become rich in politics. He can only attain greatness and satisfaction by service. — Harry S. Truman
History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. — Thurgood Marshall
As a historical legacy, the Kashmir conflict has been an outstanding issue for more than half a century. — Li Peng
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
Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible. — John Trudell
Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed — Paulo Freire
Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development. — Yuri Gagarin
Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship. — Joseph Stalin
You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning. — Andrew Jackson
Historical Romance Quotes
A historical romance is the only kind of book where chastity really counts. — Barbara Cartland
It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history. — Ned Beauman
My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre. — Hilary Mantel
It's not just what Christian fiction lacks I appreciate - it's what it offers. The variety is vast: contemporary, historical, suspense, mysteries, adventure, young adult, romance, fantasy, science fiction. — Randy Alcorn
My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot. — Kathleen Hanna
I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves Downton Abbey will realize they were actually watching a historical romance novel. — Julia Quinn
One of the things I enjoy most about writing historical romance is researching inspiring backgrounds and settings. — Nicola Cornick
My final historical romance came out December 2005. While I enjoyed writing medieval romances, I was also dying to write something with more edge. — Tina St. John
The first book I sat down to write was an historical romance. It was really bad and thankfully no one ever saw it. — Rachel Gibson
I love historical romance, absolutely love it. — Julie Garwood
Historical Fiction Quotes
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
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
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 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
Mystery Novels Quotes
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. — Raymond Chandler
After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought. — Jeff Greenfield
If I had a bookstore I would make all the mystery novels hard to find. — Demetri Martin
Every movie is a road movie. Every novel is a mystery. Every tortilla chip is sacred. — Sherman Alexie
Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living. — Dorothy L. Sayers
I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon
When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot. — Patricia Highsmith
Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel. — Ayn Rand
Adrianne Harun's dark, mysterious novel is by turns Gothic and grittily realistic, astute and poetic in its evocation of evil everywhere. — Andrea Barrett
One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero. — Carolyn Wheat
History Books Quotes
Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible was America's basic text book in all fields. God's Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct. — Noah Webster
All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing. — Moliere
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre. — Dick Gregory
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. — Henry David Thoreau
Short-term thinkers are a dime a dozen. Long-term thinkers are extremely rare. History books favor the long-term thinkers. Don't let short-term attention distract you from your long-term vision becoming a reality. Chase the big. — Patrick Bet-David
Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mist of time like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past. — Margaret Thatcher
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. — Noam Chomsky
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. — Barbara Tuchman
My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history. — Ellen Tauscher
Thanks to history books, I have realised that people over the years have been dying of war, and that enabled me to realise that there is nothing stupid like war. — Kamal Haasan
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
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
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
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
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
Actually my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published — Caroline B. Cooney
If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it. — Louis L'Amour
I write both, as you know, dozens of ecological and social scientific and historical works, dozens of novels. It's hard to describe a novel that grapples with the horrors of World War II as anything but grueling. But Codex Orféo is somehow...well, I hope, riveting for readers. Deeply provocative. Cinematic in a nearly surreal sense. — Michael Tobias
I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character. — Irvine Welsh
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
What was fun for me with this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was to start out with the principle that went, "We're going to fight every day to make this not a novel; make it too short to be a novel." And then with that principle in place, the book sort of starts to say, "Okay, but I really need this. I really need some historical nuggets." And you're like, "All right, but keep it under control." — George Saunders
One of the things that's exciting for me about this novel is that, to me, Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron were both, in certain regards, crypto-steampunk. They're both books that are interested in an alternate technological past that in fact didn't historically come to pass. If you were to ask me what my novels were about, I would say, well, these are novels about technology and how we relate to technology and what technology means. — Emily Barton
I loved reading historical novels when I was young, but I definitely don't think I wrote one. When I read my book through, when it was completely done and in printed galleys, I was surprised by how uninterested in the passage of time and history the book seemed to be. Even though you can feel it all there, that's just not what it's focused on. — Danielle Dutton
I'm not entirely sure what a historical novel absolutely has to be, but you don't want a reader who loves a very traditional historical novel to go in with the expectation that this is going to deliver the same kind of reading experience. I think what's contemporary about my book has something to do with how condensed things are. — Danielle Dutton
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
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
I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end. — Jami Attenberg
Muse, time has taught me that all metaphysical systems, even historical facts given as truths, are hardly that, so I amuse myself with more agreeable lies; I no longer read anything but novels. — Mary Wortley Montagu
When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel." — Nicholas Meyer
You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career. — Hilary Mantel
I sometimes joke that I am the first writer of historical fiction who can look out his window and point to the objects in his novels. I have a view of the entrance to the Bosporus, the old city, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque. — Orhan Pamuk
I don't try to take a person out of our world and put them into my world; that wouldn't work. It's sort of like bad Photoshop: If you see something Photoshopped together - and even if it's done pretty well - the eye catches on it. That happens a lot when people try to cut and paste people from our world into their fourteenth-century historical romance novel. — Patrick Rothfuss
Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut. — Martha Grimes
I have rarely read a more wonderful book than To Win Her Favor by Tamera Alexander. Rich with historical detail and fully developed characters, this novel held me spellbound until the last page. If you read one historical novel this year, make it To Win Her Favor. It will linger with you long after the last page. — Colleen Coble
[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.' — Robert Anton Wilson
A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter. — E. M. Forster
I've always loved writing emotionally rich, character-driven novels that explore the way people fall in love and deal with life's triumphs and tragedies. I enjoy writing the contemporary and historical books equally, though perhaps 'enjoy' is the wrong word. — Susan Wiggs
I enjoy thinking myself into other times and places. I don't like some of the conventions of the 'historical novel', but I think there's a way of doing it that has a lot of merit. — Hari Kunzru
I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past. — Peter Carey
I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well. — Matthew Tobin Anderson
Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital. — Sara Sheridan
Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving. — Janette Turner Hospital
In Conclusion
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