Historical Fiction Quotes - Page 5

Cyrus is the meat and potatoes of my life, but Prudence was a cupcake I could enjoy just for the sheer sweetness of being with her.

Bette Lee Crosby

He searched his mind for something more to say, something to take away her pain, but he could find nothing. There were no words to ease such a pain. He knew because the ache in his heart was as great as hers.

Bette Lee Crosby

Here's to the future, he said and lifted the glass to his mouth. There was a lump of regret stuck in his throat as he spoke the words, but he washed it down with the whiskey.

Bette Lee Crosby

Madame, I believe the greatest sin against God is to be false. If one is not true to one's self, then it is impossible to be true to God. I bear you no ill will for following your heart.

A man's pride will cause him to do things you never dreamed possible. He got fired up about being right and blocked out everything else.

Bette Lee Crosby

A man cannot change who he is. He can only hope that with age comes the wisdom to see his folly. I would like to believe I have achieved that.

Bette Lee Crosby

It's said truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction makes truth a friend, not a stranger.

Avi

You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.

Edwidge Danticat

How age enamels us, she would say. It builds up in layers and locks us inside our own skin, stopping us from breaking out, preventing the outside from burrowing in.

The tall, thin serious man strode in, his dark cloak billowing so dramatically it threatened to extinguish the lamp flame with its draught. He advanced like a malevolent shadow consuming the dim orange light, filling the room with a presence almost more than human.

I’m not only my father’s daughter, but also a daughter of the nation he founded. And protecting both is what I’ve always done.

Sons of a revolution fight for liberty. They give blood, flesh, limbs, their very lives. But daughters . . . we sacrifice our eternal souls.

Perhaps Zeus was king, but I was Spartan, a princess twice over, and queen of Athens besides. I knew my duty. And I would rule my own fate.

Amalia Carosella

Tolerance over time breeds resentment. Only through understanding, that comes from the acceptance of one another's differences, shall we find true peace.

He watched the young actress playing the central part of a wife who mistakenly believes her husband has wronged her. She was overly trained in the teapot school of acting, striking expressive poses and attitudes as the mood of the story demanded.

Stephen Harrigan

Stay with me?” His fingers wound into my hair, and his arm tightened around me. “Always.

Amalia Carosella

Then the vulture swooped down and away, racing the LeTort spring to the Conodoguinet Creek from there to the Susquehanna river and from there to the sea. Same river my ancestors took to reach the places where they hunted and farmed and buried their dead.

Michele McKnight Baker

I turn away from the smell of death, pressing my lavender scented handkerchief as tight as I can against my nose.

Meghan Masterson

If she could walk away, she would; her pride demanded at least that much from her. But Quincy knew that her heart beat with the rhythm of the presses in the back room, that her blood ran black with ink, and that her mind filled with reams of numbers and projections and plans. The Q was Quincy's only vital organ, so she would play the game.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become." -Steve Jobs

Shirley A. Aaron

For the first time in years, I have vivid dreams, vivid enough to count the stars and the number of ripples in the sea.

Brittany Weekley/Monroe Starr

I want to be a good man, a good writer.""Be one or the other, Ernest, not both.

Plastic flowers last for hours

Bill Fairclough

No man should be asked to live with so much sadness, and with so little promise of relief.

Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.

Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book. "Just remember not to try to hard with understanding it, " Sylvia says. "Like people, they're best not to be too thoroughly understood.

Birkenau simmered in the July sun like some hideous brew, a witch's potion of blood, sweat, smoke, and excrement worthy of something the weird sisters might have cooked up in Macbeth.

J. Michael Dolan

Now the city is at its loveliest. The crowds of summer and autumn have gone, the air has a new freshness, the light has that pale-gold quality unique to this time of year. There have been several weeks of this weather now, without a drop of rain.

That spring was the start of everything, for me. Before then, I might have been half-asleep, drifting through life.

Anything from Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memories, and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.

Matthew shook his head. “Whoever said anything of women in the Victorian era being prim and proper apparently hadn’t met Maxine Fleming.”Tahatan chuckled. “I’m sure a publisher somewhere would make a nice fortune with putting this into print. The fact is, people tend to look back on bygone times through rose-colored glasses. All eras have encouraged values that are pushed on the surface, but in the end, people are still people.

William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn't understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.

There is not a lost piece of yourself that can't be found in a good novel.

Kimberly Jo Smith

I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use for their words leave them as part of their children's inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted in special places during conversations, all are passed along to the next heir.

Edwidge Danticat

I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one.

As I grow ever closer to the end of my time, I look back at this life and tell you that the only thing I would wish to give up is the regret I've carried in my heart for all these years. At long last I have come to realize the things I once counted as regrets were indeed blessings that I was too blind to see.

Bette Lee Crosby

Mortmain is an old French word that should be tattooed on the inside of any historical novelist's skull. This wonderful and terrible word means “dead hand.” Its definition is: “The influence of the past regarded as controlling the present.” (It is also used as a legal term with the same basic meaning.

James Alexander Thom

If you don't know what those old occupations were, how they were done, and how they interacted with the passersby, you're not prepared to write a historical novel. A historical figure doesn't pass through a blank countryside. That means you, the novelist, must learn by research what the whole place was like in those times. As much as you can, you must be like someone who has lived there, because you're going to be not just the storyteller but also the tour guide taking your readers through the past.

James Alexander Thom

Some writers don't believe they're ready to begin writing the story until they've finished all the research they can think of to do — until they're sure of everything. That's a logical approach, of course. The more factual knowledge, the less likelihood you'll have to throw out a lot of glorious prose when you find out that something you assumed to be true wasn't.But one problem with delaying your start until the research is all done is that the research is never all done.

James Alexander Thom

Lucia Robson's facts can be trusted if, say, you're a teacher assigning her novels as supplemental reading in a history class. “Researching as meticulously as a historian is not an obligation but a necessity,” she tells me. “But I research differently from most historians. I'm looking for details of daily life of the period that might not be important to someone tightly focused on certain events and individuals. Novelists do take conscious liberties by depicting not only what people did but trying to explain why they did it.”She adds, “I depend on the academic research of others when gathering material for my books, but I don't think that my novels should be considered on par with the work of accredited historians. I wouldn't recommend that historians cite historical novels as sources.”And they sure don't. They wouldn't risk the scorn of their colleagues by citing novels. But, Lucia adds:“I think historical fiction and nonfiction work well together. … I'd bet that historical novels lead more readers to check out nonfiction on the subject rather than the other way around,” she says, and then notes:One of the wonderful ironies of writing about history is that making stuff up doesn't mean it's not true. And obversely, declaring something to be true doesn't guarantee that it is. In writing about events that happened a century or more ago, no one knows what historical ‘truth’ is, because no one living today was there.That's right. Weren't there. But will be, once a good historical novelist puts us there.

James Alexander Thom

Anyone young, famous and beautiful who dies young is forever frozen in time and fascinating to all of us.

Holding the bread to her chest, she made her way home, thinking of those dreamy winter afternoons, when the light looked as it did now, the crystalline blue of the sky slipping into a faded purple, as faint as a bruise.

They tell us race is an invention, that there is no genetic variation between two black people than there is between a black person and a white person. Then they tell us black people have a worse kind of breast cancer and get more fibroid. And white folk get cystic fibrosis and osteoporosis. So what’s the deal, is race an invention or not?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Most historical accounts were written by fallible scholars, using incomplete or biased resource materials; written through the scholars' own conscious or unconscious predilections; published by textbook or printing companies that have a stake in maintaining a certain set of beliefs; subtly influenced by entities of government and society — national administrations, state education departments, local school boards, etcetera — that also wish to maintain certain sets of beliefs. To be blunt about it, much of the history of many countries and states is based on delusion, propaganda, misinformation, and omission.

James Alexander Thom

Of this fickle temper he gave a memorable example in Ireland, when sent thither by his father, Henry the Second, with the purpose of buying golden opinions of the inhabitants of that new and important acquisition to the English crown. Upon this occasion the Irish chieftains contended which should first offer to the young Prince their loyal homage and the kiss of peace. But, instead of receiving their salutations with courtesy, John and his petulant attendants could not resist the temptation of pulling the long beards of the Irish chieftains; a conduct which, as might have been expected, was highly resented by these insulted dignitaries, and produced fatal consequences to the English domination in Ireland. It is necessary to keep these inconsistencies of John’s character in view, that the reader may understand his conduct during the present evening.

The longer I don't write, the more I hurt.

The world is going crazy, Karl. And when the world is crazy, a sane man is never okay." from The Berlin Boxing Club

Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you. It will only burn what you are not, - Rumi

No one ever tells you that: that there’s no method. Writing’s a lawless place.

I am looking through a lace curtain at a dead man's feet. I am ten years old, the mist is rising on a fall morning in 1944 in Sawyer, Georgia, and I am standing on a front porch painted gray with white trim.

Durand smiles. There is nothing behind the smile except perhaps another smile, repeating ad infinitum into the distance.'Of course,' he says.

Beatrice Hitchman

Was I right?" she asked him. "Was I right to make a stand against what I believed to be wrong? Even though many ills have come from it? I have been asking myself this a lot lately. I must be quiet in my conscience.

The schoolroom . . . Olivia had always adored its confines and endless horizons. The melodious purr of the teacher's voice rising up and down her lessons like a musical score. And the sight of book spines--black, blue, green--lined up side by side like London townhouses. Each leather rectangle a gift waiting to be opened and explored and savored.

In my long career in this historical fiction business, though, I've found that the most effective storytelling concept is this: Once upon a time it was now.That has become my credo and my method as a longtime historical novelist.It's quite simple, if you see as Janus sees:Today is now.Yesterday was now.Tomorrow will be now.Three hundred years ago, the eighteenth century was now.You, as a historical novelist, can make any time now by taking your reader into that time. Once you grasp that, the rest is just hard work.Stay with me, and you'll see how such work is done.

James Alexander Thom

It is one of the great arts of the human soul," Ezekiel said to himself. Her hand on the door, Quincy shifted and looked back at her uncle's profile. "What is?""Staying with someone. Companionship is one of the great arts of the human soul.

Quincy and Fisher walked through all this in silence. Silence was the most common stock-in-trade between them, and the portfolio of their friendship was thick with it. So, without words, they stepped across the streets, their feet pressing the pavement with the same sounds, their toes turned just so; they knew what life was like at each other's side. Sometimes he would speak, or she would, small offerings on the altar of their joint survival.

Nicholas met with him earlier about some lumber deal and sent him here for lunch. He's evidently new in town and was wondering where to get something good to eat.

Melissa Jagears

Margaret looked at the ring on her finger. "Gran gave me this before we boarded the ship. It's the most special thing in the world to me. I'll never take it off, Hanna. No matter how hungry I am.

Meredith Jaeger

Leave the gun, take the cannoli--Clemenza to Rocco in the Godfather (1972)

Richard S Castellano

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