Top 100 Quotes About Historical Fiction
#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. 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
#3. My books fall in the wobbly middle between historical fiction and historical romance.
Lauren Willig
#4. Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false.
Barry Unsworth
#5. Good historical fiction can bring those sights, smells, and even the oppressive heat so alive, you feel that you are there,
Erin Brown Conroy
#6. History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.
Guy Vanderhaeghe
#7. 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
#8. I found out after reading quite a lot of it that it is not rated very high. He has a very descriptive way of writing but also lengthy. May not want to finish!!!!! This was his 1sr and only try ast Historical Fiction!
Wilkie Collins
#9. Writing historical fiction is a legitimate use of Multiple Personality disorder.
Peggy Ullman Bell
#10. I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.
Lauren Willig
#11. As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
Matthew Pearl
#12. History shows us a window into our past. Historical fiction can take us by the and and lead us into that world.
Judith Geary
#13. I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre.
Mal Peet
#14. I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.
Carol Berg
#15. Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world.
Hilary Mantel
#16. One thing I like about historical fiction is that I'm not constantly focusing on me, or people like me; you're obliged to concentrate on lives that are completely other than your own.
Emma Donoghue
#17. The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
Antony Beevor
#18. Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.
Hilary Mantel
#19. I do believe that sci-fi or historical fiction finds an easy home in comics because there are no budget constraints in regards to the necessary world-building or visual effects necessary to bring those stories to life in other mediums.
Jonathan Hickman
#20. History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.
Edward M. Lerner
#21. Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
Sara Sheridan
#22. For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.
Anthony Doerr
#23. I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth.
Maurice Druon
#24. As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
George R R Martin
#25. 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
#26. I believe that historical fiction is the closest thing we have to time travel.
Cassandra Clare
#27. 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
#28. I'm a big fan of historical fiction stuff. Historical battles - 'Gladiators,' 'The Patriot.'
Andrew Luck
#29. Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.
Sara Sheridan
#30. 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
#31. Over the years, more than one reviewer has described my fantasy series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire', as historical fiction about history that never happened, flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons. I take that as a compliment.
George R R Martin
#32. What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be exposed; they panic, because they don't know which bits are true.
Hilary Mantel
#33. Writers of historical fiction would be lost without libraries and archives.
Ruta Sepetys
#34. Historical fiction is not only a respectable literary form; it is a standing reminder of the fact that history is about human beings.
Helen Cam
#35. The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.
Tony Kushner
#36. One of the joys of writing historical fiction is the chance to read as much as you like on a pet subject - so much that you could easily bore your friends senseless on the topic.
Deanna Raybourn
#37. The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.
Geraldine Brooks
#38. Seduction is an absolute pleasure to read
clever, suspenseful, exciting, mysterious, learned, and engrossing. Some of the best historical fiction I've read in quite some time and just plain reading fun. M.J. Rose is at the top of her game, and that is saying something.
David Liss
#39. I never sat down and said, 'I'm going to write historical fiction with strong romantic elements.' It was just the way the stories went.
Lauren Willig
#41. I sometimes joke that I am the first writer of historical fiction who can look out his window and point to the objects in his novels. I have a view of the entrance to the Bosporus, the old city, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque.
Orhan Pamuk
#42. If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction?
Don Cheadle
#43. Historical fiction isn't history in the conventional sense and shouldn't be judged as such. The best historical novels are loyal to history, but it is a history absorbed and set to music
Daniel Aaron
#44. I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.
Kate Mosse
#45. I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.
Antonia Fraser
#46. After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.
Michelle Moran
#47. What 'Floating Worlds' does draw on is Holland's artistry in bringing the past to life in her historical fiction and depicting the people who inhabited that past.
Pamela Sargent
#48. The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.
Tana French
#49. 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
#50. Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation.
George R R Martin
#51. I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.
Sarah Dessen
#52. Faction" is a type of historical fiction that combines fact with fiction.
Martin Herman
#54. I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.
Kathryn Lasky
#55. What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
Matthew Pearl
#56. It's still funny for me to think of myself as someone who writes historical fiction because it seems like a really fusty, musty term, and yet it clearly applies.
Susan Choi
#57. I first started writing historical fiction in the late '70s and kept pictures of Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers on my refrigerator until my first book was published by Avon in 1982. The biggest advantage of this genre for me is that it allows me to blend fact and fiction.
Virginia Henley
#58. 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
#59. All forms of literature are dangerous; but in none is the danger more acute than in historical fiction...
John Julius Norwich
#60. I'm a huge historical fiction and non-fiction fan.
Gale Anne Hurd
#61. I like a good fun chick-lit book as much as I like historical fiction, mysteries, or biographies, I like to be well-rounded!
Erin Duffy
#62. As a publisher and author, I'm a big fan of historical fiction and also memoir.
Andrea Davis Pinkney
#63. I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.
Anita Diament
#64. 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
#66. One of the great lessons I learned about historical fiction from writing 'Loving Frank' is that you don't try to disguise what people did; my approach was to try to understand the characters and why they did what they did.
Nancy Horan
#67. I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction.
Candace Camp
#68. I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt.
Henry Cavill
#69. Overall, I adhere to the one guiding rule any author writing historical fiction should follow: whatever you describe has to be possible. It may not be common, obvious, or even all that probable, but it absolutely has to be possible.
Stephanie Laurens
#70. 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
#71. Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.
Sara Sheridan
#72. 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
#73. We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.
Saul David
#74. I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.
Philippa Gregory
#75. 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
#76. Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
Pamela Sargent
#77. All of my books are acts of subversion disguised as historical fiction.
Kelly Gardiner
#78. Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins-that's why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place.
Jennifer Armstrong
#79. I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars.
Lauren Willig
#80. I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one.
Karen A. Chase
#81. Our lover is the sun, and we the stars forever floating in their glow. We push and push, yearning for our sun's rays to reach out and touch us for just a moment in time ... one second-glance to warm our spirits and soothe our aching hearts.
Katlyn Charlesworth
#83. I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves.
Charles Lamb
#84. It's no such thing! she said. It's friendship! And if you're a man who can't tell friendship from charity, then you're to be pitied!
Bette Lee Crosby
#85. The physiological effects of an electrocution are severe and painful. Besides launching the body into violent convulsions, the electrocution of a human being causes massive destruction throughout the body.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
#86. Every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.
Hilary Mantel
#87. She and I are as far apart as the stars in the sky and the soles of my feet." Detective Sean Ryan ~Deception on Sable Hill by Shelley Gray
Shelley Gray
#88. No matter her heartache, she'd begun to embrace whatever was handed to her, shrugging with a broody spirit to enter fully within.
Laura Frantz
#89. Historians turning their hands to fiction are all the rage. Since Alison Weir led the way in 2006, an ever-growing number of established non-fiction writers - Giles Milton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harry Sidebottom, Patrick Bishop, Ian Mortimer and myself included - have written historical novels.
Saul David
#90. Once a man is truly dead and carried pale and cold across the Styx--once Old Bones has put an arm about his shoulders and walked him through the Gate into Darkness--might Science yet summon him back?
Ian Weir
#91. 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
#92. Life, like that water droplet, is everlasting and imperishable. There is only a transition, never an end !
Rajib Mukherjee
#93. They were magnificent all right, with the magnificence that can only grow in the ground of great foolishness.
Orna Ross
#94. [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
#96. 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
#98. If you have found a woman who can stir both body and spirit, sir, do not give her up lightly. Do not. The alternatives can be damnably complicated. [Joseph Warren]
Donna Thorland
#99. Rebel Number Four" is waiting patiently by the door. I named him "Rebel Number Four," for he is the fourth of his kind I have given the name "Rebel." To many he may be just a hound dog, but to me he is a champion and a friend to the end.
Nancy B. Brewer
#100. 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
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