Historical Story Quotes

#1. Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.

Katherine Paterson

#2. [A]ll these years, I had been telling myself that my feelings for you were a juvenile infatuation; a dream inspired by my secret hope that somewhere there could be a creature who could love me.

Kellyn Roth

#3. 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

#4. Every great day has a story and a song!

Faith Reese Martin

#5. Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it.

Susanna Kearsley

#6. Put me down."
Of course, the man couldn't hear her. She barely heard the scratchy whisper.
"I said - "
"I heard you, Mrs. McBride, but I'm not putting you down.

MK McClintock

#7. I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

#8. Like an unfinished symphony, her story played on my mind for most of my life. It would rock to the tune of the passage of time, an adagio of high notes, low notes an illusive movements. Then when I least expected it, I happened upon the missing notes in the life of Charlotte Howe Taylor.

Sally Armstrong

#9. Listening to him tell the story now, it was clear to Adam that Glendower was more than a historical figure to Gansey. He was everything Gansey wished he could be: wise and brave, sure of his path, touched by the supernatural, respected by all, survived by his legacy.

Maggie Stiefvater

#10. Marco Polo has been kind of buried under this cloud of rather banal historical dust, when the true story is so much more exciting.

John Fusco

#11. Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.

Rachel Kushner

#12. There is scarcely a page of the Bible on which an open mind does not perceive a contradiction, an unlikely story, an obvious error, an historical impossibility of one sort or another.

Steve Allen

#13. A Quote from Monty's journal in GOD MUST BE WEEPING. I felt as anonymous as a grain of sand.

J.D. Winston

#14. The art in photography is literary art before it is anything else: its triumphs and monuments are historical, anecdotal, reportorial, observational before they are purely pictorial ... The photograph has to tell a story if it is to work as art.

Clement Greenberg

#15. The Heretic Queen is historical fiction at its best. Michelle Moran seamlessly incorporates accurate details into a story full of suspense, intrigue, and tenderness that's impossible to put down until you've reached the last page. An absolute triumph!

Tasha Alexander

#16. This is a story of Africa. A pioneer woman's journey north was merely the beginning.

Jeffrey Whittam

#17. I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

Jami Attenberg

#18. I can relate to historical characters or imaginary ones. It doesn't matter if a story takes place in the future or in the present, as long as the story is compelling.

Eric Stoltz

#19. It wasn't my choice to write this story...it was my responsibility.

Rhonda Fink-Whitman

#20. Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.

Aminatta Forna

#21. Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

Edward Rutherfurd

#22. It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

Herbert Butterfield

#23. Though the heart may be cracked wide, pain can still seep in.

Rachelle Rea Cobb

#24. Historical exclusivity often has a way of turning into present and institutionalized tragedy. Whose story gets told matters.

Aurin Squire

#25. Valentine reminds us that to be fully human is to be both a story teller and a story dweller."
--- Christina Meldrum, author of Madapple and Amaryllis in Blueberry

Tamara Valentine

#26. A little truth seasons a lie like salt.

Jacqueline Carey

#27. You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

Hilary Mantel

#28. The historical novel gives us perspective on our modern lives and helps us connect with the story, which we are continuing ourselves.

Mary Pope Osborne

#29. A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.

Kerry Greenwood

#30. To those of you who are enslaved by your past, may my story set you free. For youth is innocent and its beauty is to always be cherished.

Nancy B. Brewer

#31. To me, healing means you have to recognize there is a wound and you try to understand what the sources of the wound are, which means you try to tell a story about how it came to be. So you have to engage in some historical interpretation.

Cornel West

#32. I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like 'Wolf Hall,' but I'll read most anything as long as the story grabs my mind or my heart, and preferably both. You would be hard pressed, however, to find science fiction on my shelves.

Sue Monk Kidd

#33. The story in that particular spot was an ancient history story, and we wanted to give it a historical feeling, which was why we used a historical calligraphy scroll come to life.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson

#34. I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.

Jean M. Auel

#35. I have a story to tell. It is a tale for those who can still see, can still question.

A story of where you are and how you got here. A tale foretold by your poets and prophets through the ages. Read their words, their thoughts, so that you may understand.

W.H. Wisecarver

#36. No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you've never found yourself in it?

Sherry D. Ficklin

#37. In general, even if I'm dealing with a historical subject, I begin with invention rather than investigation, because I need to understand what is going to be the voice or the tone of the story.

Lucia Puenzo

#38. 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

#39. A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

Michael Morpurgo

#40. Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.-Leonard Cohen

Bailey Bristol

#41. There I was limited to what happened the same way I am with Riel. It doesn't feel like a great burden to have your story, to some degree, set. I am enjoying figuring out what I think is the most dramatic way of telling this set of historical facts.

Chester Brown

#42. There are filmmakers like me in different parts of the world that have a story they want to tell, and it's a story that comes out of a certain historical reality within their own life. Then you get committed all the way and however long it takes, stay very committed.

Haile Gerima

#43. To those of you who have lost your way, may my story serve as a reminder that life is a journey. The lessons we learn along the way are not for our sake alone. We are obligated to share them

Nancy B. Brewer

#44. ...graced by some delicate, perceptive and fine-boned writing, is at the heart of the book, and Creel gets it all just right.

Publishers Weekly

#45. The story of Jesus is very fascinating. It still has such a tremendous power, even after 2,000 years! We don't really know if he existed as a historical figure.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#46. A story is a wondrous invention.

Chris Womersley

#47. 'Boardwalk' begins literally on the first day of Prohibition, which I think was a wonderful way to start - to have the story kind of come out of this massive historical phenomenon. And the more I researched the '20s, the more I discovered just how interesting it was.

Michael Pitt

#48. Doctor Mengele is such a powerful character historically, as powerful as Nazism itself, so these subjects always tend to be the protagonists. What I think is that despite this historical references, Wakolda or The German Doctor is a very intimate story.

Lucia Puenzo

#49. Initial work is on period research where the historical markers are absolutely non-negotiable. Once that is established, a writer can take creative liberties in terms of chronology to suit the story.

Ashwin Sanghi

#50. The characters tell their story - I am merely the tool used to record it

Marti Melville

#51. The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.

Raymond Queneau

#52. Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

Chang-rae Lee

#53. 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

#54. I've managed to include only enough historical detail to give the "flavor" of the time period while keeping the characters and story focal.

Julie Klassen

#55. It's really important in any historical fiction, I think, to anchor the story in its time. And you do that by weaving in those details, by, believe it or not, by the plumbing.

Jacqueline Winspear

#56. Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

Raymond Queneau

#57. Jesus was a white man, too. Its like we have, hes a historical figure thats a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?

Megyn Kelly

#58. They are being offered a narrative, an historical story whose hope of 'salvation' lies not in a flight from history but in a great convulsive change within history, a transformation in which there will be continuity with the present as well as discontinuity.

N. T. Wright

#59. When your child comes home to talk about life, what could be more important?

Destin Bays

#60. If you lift the romantic element out of my plots, you still have fully formed mysteries. In the same fashion, if you pull the mystery out of a historical romance, you are left with a perfectly satisfying story.

Deanna Raybourn

#61. The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human - at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.

Thomas Berry

#62. The only real source of historical information about pre-Islamic Mecca and the circumstances of the Koran's revelation is the classical Islamic story about the religion's foundation ...

Toby Lester

#63. bad things do not happen because of a wildly complex swirl of abstract historical and social variables. They happen because bad men live to stalk our happiness. And you can fight, and possibly even defeat, bad men. If you can read the hidden story

Jonathan Gottschall

#64. Most readers of historical fiction are content to just get caught up in a good story, and that is what I want to do as an author. I am not concerned with people knowing exactly what I made up and what is real.

Melanie Benjamin

#65. I was not aware of how much I loved 'Canoa' until I saw it after doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' and realized that my voice - over about the story's historical context - that narrator - came from 'Canoa'.

Alfonso Cuaron

#66. I'll love you until I'm ashes in the dirt beneath the Earth. Then, I'll love you even more.

K. Webster

#67. The popular story is that America was built by immigrants and that, therefore, everything about immigration is good and leads to a more successful society. This narrative is so devoid of historical context that it should embarrass anyone beyond a second-grade education.

James Howard Kunstler

#68. I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.

Isabel Allende

#69. A woman's biography - with about eight famous historical exceptions - so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

#70. Everything in 'The Tudors' is initially based on my historical research, and the fact is that the most unlikely scenes were the ones which were probably most based on reality. I prefer to be as real as possible, and there is so much of that story that you just can't make up.

Michael Hirst

#71. All the characters in this book are fictional, but they are as real to me as the members of my own family. I had to tell their story because they could not.

Maral Boyadjian

#72. Between the sands of time and tradition is a multitude of truths untold.

J.E. Cross