Historical Fuction Quotes

I'm an author with a penchant for research. For me the part where I'm learning new facts comes before the story I weave
to make an entertaining read. ~ Marcia Fine

She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d'Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Social media has created a historical shift from the historically powerful to the historically powerless. Now everyone has a voice. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

He has been preparing his life and his poetry for just such a woman, just such intermingling of beauty and sorrow and mystery. But a woman like her will not settle into the role of helpmeet or muse; she is too adventurous, too vital, too fond of sensation. She will want to be, an ally. An equal. What can he, a poor student of poetry, offer her? Only his words. ~ Orna Ross

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have. ~ Ken Follett

In his numerous historical and Scriptural works Bauer rejects all supernatural religion, and represents Christianity as a natural product of the mingling of the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies ... ~ Joseph McCabe

There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders. ~ Camille Paglia

What I have learned from studying counterfactual history is that the law of unintended consequences always kicks in no matter how secure you are in your plan. We have to live with the historical record as it is, like it or not. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called "engaged withdrawal,"mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some - often even uglier - variant of the
very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities. ~ David Graeber

Poetry is a lousy form of activism; it doesn't really change much. And maybe we can point to one or two historical times when a poem has started a revolution or a rebellion or an uprising, but it doesn't happen that often, and if you put the number of poems next to the number of political acts, it would be pretty slim. ~ Daphne Gottlieb

Kevin looks at me and I know he isn't seeing the little girl I use to be, all pigtails and gangly limbs. He isn't seeing my mother's daughter or even my mother anymore. As his eyes linger over me, stopping here and there in the most uncomfortable places, I know he isn't really even seeing me as I am. The bloodshot eyes staring out of the alcohol-flushed face are seeing a girl, nearly of age, who owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Rocky Evans ~ Gwenn Wright

The wu in wuxia means both "to cut" and "to stop." It also refers to the weapon - usually a sword - carried by the assassin, the hero of the story. The genre became very popular during the Song Dynasty [960–1279]. These stories often depicted a soldier in revolt, usually against a corrupt political leader. In order to stop corruption and the killing of innocent people, the hero must become an assassin. So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. Although their actions are motivated by political reasons, the hero's journey is epic and transformative - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the Tang Dynasty, a prominent poet named Li Bai wrote some verses about an assassin. This is the earliest example I know of wuxia literature. Gradually, the genre gave shape to ideas and stories that had been percolating in historical and mythological spheres. Although these stories were often inspired by real events of the past, to me they feel very contemporary and relevant.

It's one of the oldest genres in Chinese literature, and there are countless wuxia novels today. I began to immerse myself in these novels when I was in elementary school, and they quickly became my favorite things to read. I started with newer books and worked my way back to the earliest writing from the Tang Dynasty. ~ Hou Hsiao-hsien

I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist. ~ Carol Berg

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. ~ David Bentley Hart

No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

You're not supposed to be on the bed," he told the puppy. "It's contractually prohibited. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I was too far away to hear what was said but I saw in Val's eyes the same fear that I had once known and could well guess at Lucas' unthinking remark. ~ Julia Lee Dean

The Postman rings twice, but the Insurance man rings until he collects"-Scott G. Brown ~ Scott G. Brown

Between 1946-1956, every turn was a left turn. I had to fend off temptations toward anarchism. I was more deeply drawn into the vision of an egalitarian society shaped by radical social engineering, Marxist historical and sociological interpretation, and resource redistribution. Everything imaginable seemed possible for my young mind, and I was well rewarded for my utopian thoughts by those older leaders of my church. Resistance to all those ideas simply didn't occur either on my part or on the part of people I knew, including family and friends. I was on a mission to make the world a much better place and felt empowered to actually transform our society ~ Thomas C. Oden

You can be fearful of death. Just don't be fearful of facing it - Konjic ~ Rehan Khan

Post-modern intellectuals have pronounced their historical judgment on America's past, finding it to be morally indefensible. Every great human achievement of the past - whether in philosophy, religion, literature, or the humanities - came to be understood as a kind of exploitation of the powerless. Rather than allowing the past to be viewed in terms of its aspirations and accomplishments, it has been judged by its failures. The living part of the past is understood in terms slavery, racism, and identity politics. Political correctness arose as the practical and necessary means of enforcing this historical judgment. No public defense of past greatness could be allowed to live in the present. Public morality and public policy would come to be understood in terms of the formerly oppressed. ~ John Marini

It is possible to express the laws of thermodynamics in the form of independent principles , deduced by induction from the facts of observation and experiment, without reference to any hypothesis as to the occult molecular operations with which the sensible phenomena may be conceived to be connected; and that course will be followed in the body of the present treatise. But, in giving a brief historical sketch of the progress of thermodynamics, the progress of the hypothesis of thermic molecular motions cannot be wholly separated from that of the purely inductive theory. ~ William John Macquorn Rankine

We have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice; we ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

She [Susanna] realized she was still hugging the wall. Pride propelled her two steps forward. As she advanced, something bleated at her, as though chastising her for trespassing. She stopped midstep and peered at it. "Did you know there's a lamb in here?"
"Never mind it. That's dinner."
She gave it a smile and a friendly pat. "Hullo, Dinner. Aren't you a sweet thing."
"It's not his name, it's his ... function. ~ Tessa Dare

Some people become passionate readers and fans of science fiction during childhood or adolescence. I picked up on SF somewhat later than that; my escape reading of choice during my youth was historical novels, and one of my favorite writers was Mary Renault. ~ Pamela Sargent

The annals of official philosophy are populated by 'bureaucrats of pure reason' who speak in 'the shadow of the despot' and are in historical complicity with the State. They invent 'a properly spiritual…absolute State that… effectively functions in the mind.' Theirs is a discourse of sovereign judgment, of stable subjectivity legislated by 'good' sense, of rocklike identity, 'universal' truth, and (white male) justice. 'Thus the exercise of their thought is in conformity with the aims of the real State, with the dominant significations, and with the requirements of the established order. ~ Gilles Deleuze

Puerto Rico is an island separated by an ocean, a language, a culture. All of that put it in a position where it's like, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but what happened in Puerto Rico never happened at all. It's not like there was a decades-long conspiracy. It's just the aggregation of all these historical forces made it difficult for this information to exist in one place. ~ Nelson Antonio Denis

You are a woman born of secrets and sadness. It will either destroy your future or lead you to greatness. A handsome gentleman with eyes like the sky and hair like a raven's wing will come into your life. If you let him, he will become the hand of your vengeance. If you let him,he will shatter your heart. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Her breath caught when his erection shot to rigid. "Merciful Father, Ye're like a stallion with a mare in heat. ~ Amy Jarecki

On what does the Christian argument for Immortality really rest? It stands upon the pedestal on which the theologian rests the whole of historical Christianity-the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. ~ William Henry Drummond

You know, by the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions ... You may find you can get away with virtual presidents, virtual prime ministers, virtual everything. ~ William J. Clinton

Her entire life, she'd been told sin was wrong, a black and white interpretation of what is evil and what is holy in the world - colored like a priest's robe and collar - but she never believed it to be true. Sin was colorful: scarlet like rose blood, azure like skin deprived oxygen, violet as bruises, jade as rot; a colorful contradiction to the darkness and blinding light all are taught sin and holiness to be. ~ Madi Merek

And I'd like to say to the Senate, I hope you will say yes to a stronger American democracy in the year 2000. ~ William J. Clinton

Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed. ~ Chris Hedges

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

At least reindeer kisses do not cause me to take leave of my senses. ~ Shelly Thacker

During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religiuos, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue. ~ Philip Khuri Hitti

Whether David believed in her affliction or not didn't change the fact that it existed, and some day it would catch up with her. ~ Tamara Hughes