Romantic Historical Fiction Quotes

I bid you welcome to a new Utopia where men may be free of the so-called moral subjugations and constraints, and where for a time we may shake off those bonds of servitude wherein we are so tyrrannously enslaved."
"You are the humanist,George, not I- what the deuce does he natter on about?"
"Mostly whores and Booze," George replied with a grin.
Sandwidh contined while rapping once more upon the door, "Man is led into vice only when he is denied, my friends; for it is his nature to long after things forbidden and to desire most fervently what is denied."
"Another translation?" Philip asked George.
"Whores and booze ... in boundless supply."
"Ah,"Philip said. "I stand in renewed appreciation of the philosophers. ~ Emery Lee

I am not a twenty-two-year-old boy; I am not a besotted fool. If you think to jilt me, think again. For I will not turn tail and run the other way as he did, oh no. I will find you, and I will drag you to the altar on your back if need be, no matter how you might be screaming. No matter how scandalous it might be. ~ Brenda Joyce

Before he could decide what to do, he heard a female voice call out, "Pepe? Mack?"
Pepe recognized the voice as belonging to Senora Rodriguez. No, Senora Thompson. There'd been a wedding in late summer. He hurried out to the main part of the barn to see what she wanted.
Senora Thompson stood just inside the entrance, holding the reins of her mare, Bianca, a black beauty with four white stockings and a blaze down her nose her husband had given her after their marriage. ~ Debra Holland

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven's gate. ~ Ned Hayes

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.
The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.
Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure.
Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.
Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.
Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

(Hypothesis on Literature vs. Genre) ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Judge with your eyes closed shut and your heart wide open. ~ Sijuan King

When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls. ~ Kathryn Lasky

Capital dictates the fate of humanity. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Nothing good in this world comes free! For everything there's a payment of time or money or soul! ~ Kellyn Roth

In her previous life, Aliya had read somewhere that technology should never be allowed to outrun morality. Otherwise, the clock will strike Armageddon, and both God and the Devil will turn tail and run. ~ Lina J. Potter

I'll let you into a little secret. If you want quality, if you want elegance, if you want individuality, then Gwenna's Superior Sweet Treats are for you. ~ Vicky Adin

I really enjoy mysteries, well-written fiction novels, historical novels, and the occasional vampire, wolf, human triangle as long as it's real ~ Michael Connelly

If we want the Lord to accomplish mighty deeds in our own lives, the first step is to put what we have in His hands.~ pg 111 ~ Karen Witemeyer

Anything by Kipling ~ Rudyard Kipling

I was like a child bitten by a viper. All I could think of was finding a way to remove the fangs sunken into my skin. I had no notion that I still had to contend with the venom pumping through my veins. ~ Tessa Afshar

For some reason, notwithstanding the alienation and utter rejection, I consider myself a global citizen. They say misery calls for company and I've always been a man of funerals. The companion of the misfortunate, until they are not! ~ Asaad Almohammad

It is not the development of material need which sets the modern vocabulary of aspiration apart from anything which has gone before, but rather the transformation of our spiritual needs. It is our spirits, not our clothes and houses and cars, that set us so radically apart from our own past and form much of the rest of the world. Imagine what we must be like to the primitive peoples who receive our attentions as anthropologists. We come upon them armed with our mastery of nature, and yet they can disarm us with the simplest metaphysical inquiry: what happen when people die? where do they go? what are the duties of the living to the dead? Their cultures are as rich in answers to these questions as our culture is rich in answers to the technical and scientific problems which baffle them.

It has always been a truism of the Western bad conscience that we have purchased our mastery of nature at the price of our spirits. The conservative and romantic critique of Western progress has always used the example of the savage - rich in cosmology, poor in goods - to argue for an inverse historical relationship between the development of material and spiritual needs. Certainly this view could draw upon the dark side of the Christian theology of need. While secular optimists have trust in the permanence of spiritual need, Augustinian Christians have fixed their gaze on the nightmare of the happy slave: the being so absorbed by the material that all spiritual needs have perished.< ~ Michael Ignatieff

Would not the world be a better place if a man simply lived in humility and loved his brother or sister as himself, regardless of one's birth? ~ Jody Hedlund

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Life is volatile. ~ Robert J. Pajer

The bands were everywhere, close and faraway, a blend of discordant noise. He passed close to one now, a half-dozen drummers pounding away, a sergeant leading them in a rhythm that was no rhythm at all, and behind, men with fifes, squealing out something that had no resemblance to a song. ~ Jeff Shaara

You may not know this, but talking about mathematics eliminates any possibility of being kissed in the first place. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I live, at all times, for imaginative fiction; for ambivalence, not instruction. When language serves dogma, then literature is lost. I live also, and only, for excellence. My care is not for the cult of egalitarian mediocrity that is sweeping the world today, wherein even the critics are no longer qualified to differentiate, but for literature, which you may notice I have not defined. I would say that, because of its essential ambivalence, 'literature' is: words that provoke a response; that invite the reader or listener to partake of the creative act. There can be no one meaning for a text. Even that of the writer is a but an option.

"Literature exists at every level of experience. It is inclusive, not exclusive. It embraces; it does not reduce, however simply it is expressed. The purpose of the storyteller is to relate the truth in a manner that is simple: to integrate without reduction; for it is rarely possible to declare the truth as it is, because the universe presents itself as a Mystery. We have to find parables; we have to tell stories to unriddle the world.

"It is a paradox: yet one so important I must restate it. The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth; but what we feel most deeply cannot be spoken in words. At this level only images connect. And so story becomes symbol; and symbol is myth."

"It is one of the main errors of historical and rational analysis to suppose that the 'original form' of myth can be separated from its ~ Alan Garner

An inseparable complement to the exoticism in his stories is the erudition, the bits of specialized knowledge, usually literary, but also philological, historical, philosophical, or theological. This knowledge, which borders on but never oversteps the bounds of pedantry, is quite freely flaunted. But the point is not to show off Borges's wide acquaintance with different cultures. Rather, it is a key element in his creative strategy, the aim of which was to imbue his stories with a certain colorfulness, to endow them with an atmosphere all their own. In other words Borges's learning by his use of exotic settings and characters fulfills an exclusively literary function, which, in twisting the erudition around and making it sometimes decorative, sometimes symbolic, subordinates it to the task at hand. In this way Borges's theology, philosophy, linguistics and so forth, lose their original character, take on the quality of fiction, and, becoming part and parcel of a literary fantasy, are turned into literature. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they'd say yes. ~ George R R Martin

History is about the untold story, and writing historical fiction is a wonderful way to present the past in a compelling and entertaining way. ~ Paul W. Feenstra

Writing is the Art, re-writing the craft. ~ O'Brien Browne

Even if the past exists as an independent reality outside the minds of those who write about it, we can never know that reality. Historians and writers of historical fiction attempt to fill in the gaps, to say: 'This is how it might have been.' ~ John Zanetti

It's funny because when I was growing up, I was really into science fiction and fantasy as a kid. And, when I first became a screenwriter, I ended up really just doing historical drama and non-fiction based stuff, like Band of Brothers and stuff that didn't get made, but was also non-fiction. ~ John Orloff

The significance of the effect is determined by the importance of the immediate cause. ~ L. Smith

What takes more courage. To live ... or to die? ~ Anne Rouen

Love is a poison,' her father responded. 'One you grow accustomed to, but does not kill you. ~ Janell Rhiannon

Our house has its back to the sea,' writes Hester in her journal. 'Below us, the ocean spreads to the sky, twitching wide and blue and hungry. One would think it to be infinite. But we, of course, know better. ~ Tanya Moir

Today's breakfast consist of rice and a piece of bread fried in a bit of salt pork grease. At least I have my memories of grand banquets and fine foods, but this is all the children have ever known. I suppose it is best not to have anything to compare. ~ Nancy B. Brewer

I have found that those who try to shield us from the truth, regardless of the reason, end up doing the greatest harm. Truth alone sets you free, not lies and omissions. ~ Jessica Dotta

They wouldn't, if they realized that socialist "freedom" involved killing anyone who held a different view. That was no freedom. That was the worst form of tyranny - the kind that lied about what it was. ~ Roseanna M. White

But what if Oscar - "
"Breathes fire and threatens to cook you over a grill?"
"I was thinking what if he gets mad, but I think your way works as well."
"Then you shall make for a tasty meal. ~ Erica Sehyun Song

Not having any drink about ain't the same as not understanding the need for one. Times like these change a body's perspective. ~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

So why had he come? He'd said he'd had no choice, but for centuries men had chopped off their own limbs, faked insanity, gone into hiding or to prison rather than to war. Was there some dark flaw in his psyche? Did he have some perverse need to destroy? To kill? ~ Dominique Wilson

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead. ~ Madeline Miller

While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another. ~ Sara Sheridan

To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Grief is like an ocean. It comes in waves - some waves are bigger than others and you cannot prepare for it. ~ Summer Lane

Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation. ~ George R R Martin

Church words are easy to say, but they're not so easy to live by. ~ Bette Lee Crosby

I will not stand by and let any man believe his death is an act of one of the gods. They don't deserve the credit. This is just nature, a side effect of mortality - H ~ Katie Hamstead

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

Prisoners!" Finan shouted, and I suspected he was shouting at me because I had so blatantly ignored my own insistence that we take men captive. ~ Bernard Cornwell

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

Love is an elusive fantasy that torments maidens and confounds young men. ~ Padraic Connelly