Historical Ficiton Quotes

In the knowing, there was peace. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

The Bible itself is a book that constantly must be wrestled with and re-interpreted ... Bible interpretation is colored by historical context, the reader's bias and current realities. The more you study the Bible, the more questions it raises. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. ~ Rob Bell

A hint of fire in his eyes, he glanced up at her. If that displeases you, lass, I can leave you here for the next savior who comes along. ~ Pamela Clare

Whenever I've had to tamper with history for plot purposes, I make sure to mention that in my author's note, and I try to keep such tampering to a bare minimum. I also attempt to keep my characters true to their historical counterparts. This is not always possible, of course. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about. ~ John Polkinghorne

"Contemporary art" for me is a kind of historical term that describes the 40 years between the Berlin Wall going up and then coming down. I'm not sure who will come up with a better term to describe art, but I think contemporary art is actually done for. ~ Liam Gillick

A crassly arbitrary method can be avoided only when it is accepted that etymological statements are historical and not authoritative and that semantic statements must be based on the social linguistic consciousness related to usage. ~ James Barr

You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, this character's a murderer! Look who did it!. ~ Sara Sheridan

At every historical conjuncture, the present is not only present, it also encompasses a perspective on the past immanent to it - after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, say, the October Revolution is no longer the same historical event: it is (from the triumphant liberal-capitalist view) no longer the beginning of a new progressive epoch in the history of humanity, but the beginning of a catastrophic swerving off-course of history which reached its end in 1991. ~ Anonymous

Beautiful people don't need coats. They've got their auras to keep them warm. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

I didn't want to be an actor. I wanted to design historical movies like 'Ben-Hur'. I saw this as my life. ~ Dante Ferretti

Trying to prove scientifically the historical accuracy of events in the Bible is to faith what having your spouse under twenty-four-hour video surveillance is to marital trust. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Two historical figures play prominent roles in this book: a pair of priests who lived centuries apart but who were tied together by fate. During the seventeenth century, Father Athanasius Kircher was known as the Leonardo da Vinci of the Jesuit Order. ~ James Rollins

Long historical books get written by women, but not contemporary experiments, which still seems to be a very male-dominated field. ~ Eleanor Catton

Ive spent my whole life working in a medium that was regarded with contempt largely because of historical reasons. ~ Will Eisner

Historical periodization always tells a story. It is a narrative device for putting meaning into the flux of historical process - creating protagonists, heroes, pace, and plot. For this reason, the division of history into periods always carries an ideological load, and it is a methodological imperative to approach questions of broad historical periodization with this in mind. ~ James Ferguson

Coconut oil has been described as the "World's Healthiest Dietary Oil". There is a mountain of historical evidence and medical research to verify this fact ~ Bruce Fife

Our teaching of mathematics revolves around a fundamental conflict. Rightly or wrongly, students are required to master a series of mathematical concepts and techniques, and anything that might divert them from doing so is deemed unnecessary. Putting mathematics into its cultural context, explaining what is has done for humanity, telling the story of its historical development, or pointing out the wealth of unsolved problems or even the existence of topics that do not make it into school textbooks leaves less time to prepare for the exam. So most of these things aren't discussed. ~ Ian Stewart

She moved her hips, his manhood sliding between her wet thighs, rekindling the hot craving at her very core. "How can I bring you pleasure? ~ Amy Jarecki

If you insist on standing in such a state of undress, it is your shadow that will have to get out of my way. ~ Meg Hennessy

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow. ~ H.G.Wells

Every great day has a story and a song! ~ Faith Reese Martin

Let us by all means teach black history, African history, women's history, Hispanic history, Asian history. But let us teach them as history, not as filiopietistic commemoration. The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment, and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

You will be the death of me, woman. ~ Angela Quarles

I'm not going to accept your challenge. There will be no duel."
"Why not? Because I'm a woman?"
"No, because I've seen the way you spinsters handle a pistol. You'd shoot me dead where I stood. ~ Tessa Dare

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources. ~ Thomas Mallon

Everyone has a past, and everyone's past matters. ~ Susan Meissner

White voters who feel they are losing a historical hold on power are reacting to something real. For the bulk of American history, you couldn't win the presidency without winning a majority - usually an overwhelming majority - of white vote. Though this changed before Obama - Bill Clinton won slightly less of the white vote than his Republican challengers - the election of an African American president leading a young, multiracial coalition made the transition stark and threatening. ~ Ezra Klein

The state does not function as we desired. A man is at the wheel and seems to lead it, but the car does not drive in the desired direction. It moves as another force wishes. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Sphinx Resurrected by Christine Murphy gives a new romantic twist to the realm of the paranormal. The world building is extraordinary and pulls you in to the powerful domain of the Sphinx Warriors and won't let you go. ~ Marti Ziegler

I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough! ~ Pat Barker

We must not focus on occupying the spaces where power is exercised, but rather on starting long-run historical processes. We must initiate processes rather than occupy spaces. ~ Pope Francis

A witty vicar once said that a good marriage is like a pair of scissors with the couple inseparable joined, often moving in opposite directions, yet always destroying anyone who comes between them. The trick is for the blades to learn to work smoothly together, so as not to cut each other. ~ Mary Jo Putney

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it. ~ Pamela Sargent

Daniel, I did not knowwhat I wanted when I was agirl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don't want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter."
"And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our belifs without danger," he insisted.
"Yes," I said, "in the England that Elizabeth will make. ~ Philippa Gregory

If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers. ~ William Butler Yeats

The historical record suggests that the transition to to a new hegemon has always been attended by what I have elsewhere called hegemonic war. ~ Robert Gilpin

I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question. ~ Denzel Washington

Yes, I hate blown glass art and I happen to live in the blown glass art capital of the world, Seattle, Washington. Being a part of the Seattle artistic community, I often get invited to galleries that are displaying the latest glass sculptures by some amazing new/old/mid-career glass blower. I never go. Abstract art leaves me feeling stupid and bored. Perhaps it's because I grew up inside a tribal culture, on a reservation where every song and dance had specific ownership, specific meaning, and specific historical context. Moreover, every work of art had use - art as tool: art to heal; art to honor, art to grieve. I think of the Spanish word carnal, defined as, 'Of the appetites and passions of the body.' And I think of Gertrude Stein's line, 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.' When asked what that line meant, Stein said, 'The poet could use the name of the thing and the thing was really there.' So when I say drum, the drum is really being pounded in this poem; when I say fancydancer, the fancydancer is really spinning inside this poem; when I say Indian singer, that singer is really wailing inside this poem. But when it comes to abstract art - when it comes to studying an organically shaped giant piece of multi-colored glass - I end up thinking, 'That looks like my kidney. Anybody's kidney, really. And frankly, there can be no kidney-shaped art more beautiful - more useful and closer to our Creator - than the kidney itself. And beyond that, this glass isn't funny. There's ~ Sherman Alexie

Nowadays it seems you learn only what is reasonable
and relevant. I went to Rome with a young
friend, educated on the latest lines, and who
had taken historical honours at Cambridge.
The first morning the pats of butter came
up stamped with the Twins. " Good old
Romulus and Remus," said I. " Good old
who? " said she. She had never heard of
the Twins and was much bored when I told
her the story; they had no place in " con¬
stitutional history ", and for her the old wolf
of the Capitol howled in vain: " Great God!
I'd rather be "! ~ Jane Ellen Harrison

If he spoke, there was no possible outcome but another disastrous exchange of words at cross-purposes. The chances of him finding both the right words and the right inflection were, in his experience with her thus far, vanishingly small. He would either growl at her, or tell her what was in his heart. ~ Carolyn Jewel

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don't think Kennedy should have done it. I don't think Johnson should have done it, and I don't think we should have done it. ~ Richard M. Nixon

The historical approach to understanding of scientific fact is what differentiates the scholar in science from the mere experimenter. ~ Edwin Boring

In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new beliefs of a society based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgment of other lifestyles is a crime ... The "non-judgmental" attitude towards other cultures goes hand-in-hand with a fierce denunciation of the culture that might have been one's own ~ Roger Scruton

The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions. ~ Paul De Man

India's present challenges cannot be understood or addressed unless they are viewed from a historical perspective. ~ Aseem Shrivastava

We need to take nostalgia seriously as an energizing impulse, maybe even a form of knowledge. The effort to revalue what has been lost can motivate serious historical inquiry; it can also cast a powerful light on the present. ~ T. J. Jackson Lears

He wished for access to all the world's languages at once, for then he would have a better word for how he felt and what she was. ~ Julie Anne Long

when you walk the path of revenge, know that someone will always follow your trail ~ Aziz Hamza

To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know. ~ P. McCree Thornton