Writers On Writing History Quotes

#1. I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

Jonathan Swift

#2. As an editor, I must often tell writers that their stories "do not fit our present needs." But there are times when I want to reply: "Sir, I would not trust you to write a ransom note."

Richard Conniff

#3. People are reading. In fact, due to social media they are reading more than any time in history. Now we must find a way to get them to include books in all that reading. It starts with us writers doing a better job of writing.

Will Gibson

#4. The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.

Margaret Atwood

#5. We will say to people that if you can work, and if you want to work, we will do everything we can to help you. We will give you the training, we will give you the support, we will give you the advice to get you going and get you back at work.

David Cameron

#6. How to read writers on writing: With respect, amusement, and skepticism. They will contradict one another-as they should-for each writer brings an individual history to the writing task. There is no single theology here.

Donald Murray

#7. We gotta do it for Johnny...Let's do it for Johnny!

S.E. Hinton

#8. I'm often asked which author I am most inspired by, but I'm inspired by all authors. It takes a great deal of courage to pour your onto paper and watch silently as the world judges it loudly.

Charity Parkerson

#9. What you see with the eyes of faith is more real than what you see with your optical eyes.

Chris Oyakhilome

#10. Maurice Kenny stands at the forefront of his generation. Few writers of any ethnicity are destined to be remembered in the mainstream of literary history; I believe that Kenny's contributions as a poet are among those few. He writes from the center, as our Elders would say.

Wendy Rose

#11. Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

Lord Acton

#12. My mother is changing history. She is making her balalaika-smashing mother into a heroine. Does she want me to do the same for her? Is that what good children do for their parents? What about good writers?

Gary Shteyngart

#13. Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial ... a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer.

James Kisner

#14. Anyway, the way political history is passed down is influenced and spoiled by the closeness of the writers to the political figures that they're writing about. It's a sad state of affairs, but there's probably more veracity of reporting in my work than there is in the newspapers.

Raymond Pettibon

#15. We are somebody's memories when we are gone,

Devania Annesya

#16. By definition he [the writer] cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it

Albert Camus

#17. I make myself laugh at everything, so that I do not weep.

Pierre Beaumarchais

#18. God preserve us from writers who regurgitate what they have learnt from books! It is people's secrets we want to know - it is the natural history of the human heart that we have been trying to put down for a thousand years and everyone must and can leave their contribution.

August Strindberg

#19. There's power in stories, though. That's all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine.

Varric Tethras

#20. When did I ever teach anything wrong from this stand? When was I ever confounded? I want to triumph in Israel before I depart hence and am no more seen. I never told you I was perfect; but there is no error in the revelations which I have taught. Must I, then, be thrown away as a thing of naught?

Joseph Smith Jr.

#21. The written word is greatest sacred documentation.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#22. Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.

M. Kirin

#23. Stop making excuses and start making history.

A.D. Posey

#24. There are the countries of the north of Europe taking decisions and the countries of the south of Europe that are living under intervention. This division exists.

Jose Maria Aznar

#25. Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: Tell the history of our time through the people who make it.

Walter Isaacson

#26. For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography. They break the rules and admit the thing that is imagined, but is not licensed to be imagined.

Hilary Mantel

#27. If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#28. Some writers just write about their own lives. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to have a really boring life. A quiet, boring life so no one wants to write a biography. I'm the only writer in history only to have one wife, for instance.

T.C. Boyle