Historic Fiction Quotes

Father didn't want to seem weak in front of us and that itself was a weakness. ~ Maddy Kobar

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction ... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors. ~ Lois Lowry

If you find that you're going through hell, keep moving. You will get to the end eventually. ~ Kimberly Brouillette

I'm too old to be ignorant as I am."
--Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world's brutality. ~ Elle Thornton

Niniane gave the Vampyre a lopsided smile then looked at her hands. She couldn't possibly tell Carling that she thought the Vampyre was something precious and horrific, an enigmatic tragedy like the ruins of a historic battlefield. ~ Thea Harrison

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader. ~ Cynthia Ozick

Right up till the 1980s, SF envisioned giant mainframe computers that ran everything remotely, that ingested huge amounts of information and regurgitated it in startling ways, and that behaved (or were programmed to behave) very much like human beings ... Now we have 14-year-olds with more computing power on their desktops than existed in the entire world in 1960. But computers in fiction are still behaving in much the same way as they did in the Sixties. That's because in fiction [artificial intelligence] has to follow the laws of dramatic logic, just like human characters. ~ Walter Jon Williams

I don't think working in superheroes is slumming it. I'm proud of this form. I like this. There's nothing inherently masculine about power fantasies. There's nothing inherently masculine about superhero comics. There's nothing inherently masculine about mythology. About science fiction. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

I chose "Discovery" instead of "Invention" to suggest that science is the way it is not so much because of various adventitious historic acts of invention, but because of the way nature is. With all its imperfections, modern science is a technique that is sufficiently well tuned to nature so that it works - it is a practice that allows us to learn reliable things about the world. In this sense, it is a technique that was waiting for people to discover it. ~ Steven Weinberg

Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope. Thomas Edison, American inventor ~ George Washington

Please don't be upset. The last thing in the world I want is to see you upset and that too with me. It's terrifying to see your beautiful eyes turn red with anger. ~ Vivek Pereira

To be really realistic a description would
have to be endless. Where Stendhal describes in one phrase Lucien Leuwen's entrance into a room, the
realistic artist ought, logically, to fill several volumes with descriptions of characters and settings, still
without succeeding in exhausting every detail. Realism is indefinite enumeration. By this it reveals that its
real ambition is conquest, not of the unity, but of the totality of the real world. Now we understand why it
should be the official aesthetic of a totalitarian revolution. But the impossibility of such an aesthetic has
already been demonstrated. Realistic novels select their material, despite themselves, from reality,
because the choice and the conquest of reality are absolute conditions of thought and expression. To
write is already to choose. There is thus an arbitrary aspect to reality, just as there is an arbitrary aspect to
the ideal, which makes a realistic novel an implicit problem novel. To reduce the unity of the world of
fiction to the totality of reality can only be done by means of an a priori judgment which eliminates form,
reality, and everything that conflicts with doctrine. Therefore so-called socialist realism is condemned by
the very logic of its nihilism to accumulate the advantages of the edifying novel and propaganda
literature. ~ Albert Camus

I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms. ~ Ben Lerner

Being a fiction writer is really like being an actor, because if you're going to write convincingly it has to sound right and play right. The only way that works is to emotionally and technically act out and see the scene you're in.
There's no better job in the world, because when I sit down at that computer I'm the world's best forensics expert, if that's what I'm writing about that day. Or I'm some crazed psycho running down a dark alley.
Or I'm a gorgeous woman looking to find a man that night. Whatever! But I'm all of those things, every day. How can you beat that? ~ Ridley Pearson

An immersive murder mystery wrapped in an emotionally astute look at the burden of a town's moral history." -- Kirkus Reviews ~ Richard Snodgrass

Thorne looked to the woolly beast at his [Bram's] knee and and cocked a brow. "You seem to have acquired a lamb, my lord."
"The lamb goes home tomorrow."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He's dinner. ~ Tessa Dare

Angel you may have lucked out this time, but just remember I'm going to be on your ass until I get my revenge. I promise you this will not be the last time you will see me! You're a dead man Medina, maybe not now but soon! - Orlando to Angel under the crumbling furnace in the hotel. ~ Angel Ramon Medina

Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them. ~ Neil Gaiman

Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it. ~ Annie Dillard

Sharon, you have bewitched me, body and soul. I don't wish to be parted from you, from this day forward. ~ Lynda Colucci

Your self is a cosmetic
fiction, a centrifuge. ~ Warren Heiti

Fiction is love and hate and agreement and conflict and common adventure, not lonely musings on have-beens and might-have-beens. ~ Alfred Bertram Guthrie

You can tell when a Hollywood historical film was made by looking at the eye makeup of the leading ladies, and you can tell the date of an old science fiction novel by every word on the page. Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future. ~ Alfred Bester

Now that I no longer feel lonely, and now that my own past feels resolved in a whole new and very deep way, I am excited to write about the real world, to stay in it. Fiction is an escape, a parallel life, and it was a powerful source of comfort for me when my own life was raw and uncomfortable. I don't feel the burning need to disappear into a fictional character these days. ~ Kate Christensen

Quinn dropped her hand and avoided Thalcu's eye. "I . . . I don't want to kill you," she said to the floor. "Not if I could save you."

The woman smiled gently at Quinn, her lips curling behind her oxygen mask. "I will not really die," she said, drawing Quinn's surprised gaze. She looked at Quinn contently a moment and went on, "Do you know how worlds are born? From the first breath of a star. We are made of starlight. We can not bear to look into the sun, into the thing that birthed us, anymore than we can bear to look upon our parents in the throes of passion. It is our point of origin, and to it, we all must return. ~ Ash Gray

Whose Daddy's Little Girl Now? ~ Lauren Bradshaw

Until then, you can do what everyone else your age does. Listen to music. Watch the television. Just keep your nose away from those books. ~ Kami Garcia

I often think of setting as an important character in my story. 'Dark Powers' takes place in Doncaster, a Maryland Eastern Shore community rich with watermen and historic atmosphere. I modeled it after a stunning little town called St. Michaels, but since a lot of bad things happen in Doncaster, I changed the name. ~ Ruth Glick

Chaotic Of Echoes The Lands Darkest Hours Of Lions
Architect the Garlots of War The Precognitions ~ Philippa Ballantine

If you take the shackles off your imagination, you can go anywhere with science fiction. ~ Lani Tupu

Love is as hard to hide as hate. ~ Jennifer Hudson Taylor

I thought it must be pure science fiction. But when I checked it out I found a lot of magazine articles that actually supported the theory behind the book which was incredible. That's when I decided to acquire the rights of the book and everything went from there. ~ Roland Emmerich

Perhaps for many Japanese, autobiographical fiction writing is life. We are a people expected to complement, to harmonize, to anticipate one another's needs. All without a single spoken clue.

And the reason is that he's in training to be a writer. Observing detail, understanding irony, interpreting motivation. Hiro knows that acts are symbolic. The hard sour fruit offered too soon in its season carries a message. He has made an error in the timing of his visit. He has inconvenienced that family.

This is the Japanese way. Cogitating on inner meaning. Revealing ourselves and perceiving others through carefully crafted scenes.

Writing our endless I-stories. ~ Lydia Minatoya

Ignoring the pain is more desirable than confronting it. And that's survival one-oh-one. ~ Siobhan Davis

At its heart, Gothic Fiction is the introvert's "Hero's Journey" where heroes and heroines must navigate the uncharted territory of the mind in order to solve the mystery of their life's adventure. ~ Barrymore Tebbs

Truths are dangerous," he said.
"Then why are you writing them in a book?"
"To catch them between the pages," said Teddy, "and trap them before they disappear. ~ Kristin Cashore

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is ~ Nancy Kress

You cruel, hard-hearted gods!" I flung the goblet in his direction. Hermes barely had time to dart out of its way before it hit the wall and shattered to small pieces. "You're all the same! Hsst! Jealous! Vindictive! That's what you are! You allow yourselves to take pleasure with any mortal you wish. Let a goddess do the same. Let a goddess choose a mortal for her lover, and you set off in a fury of revenge against her as if her actions are an affront to you. And all the while, you male gods allow yourselves all kinds of liberties you deny to us females. ~ Tamara Agha-Jaffar

We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of those two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love. ~ Tim Farrington

When I write I feel like I can breathe. It's like yoga for the brain. ~ Elise Stokes

His voice sounded like the rich taste of chocolate on your tongue. ~ Tamera Alexander

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that. ~ Nell Freudenberger

He watches the shadows cast by her hands as she sorts through their clothes scattered across the floor. The shape of her arms as she reaches up, slipping his black T-shirt over her head -- like victory. He considers the triumph of this moment, the slick of sweat on his chest. A small clatter, then the sound of a striking match. Her face glows. he reaches for her. She blows the match out, darts across the room, lights another one, glows, blows it out. ~ Suzanne Alyssa Andrew