To suggest that Quebecers willingly give up the chance to exercise fully their influence within the federal government would be to betray the historical role Quebec has always played in Confederation, and to undermine the legitimacy of their pride and ambitions.
You can't believe anything that's written in an historical novel, and yet the author's job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It's especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction.
Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.
What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we're looking at is not a historical event but - and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it - a racket.
I love historical references.
There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.
Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.
Thus, in accordance with the spirit of the Historical School, knowledge of the principles of the human world falls within that world itself, and the human sciences form an independent system.
A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
I knew from an online search that the Wisconsin State Historical Society, on the vast University of Wisconsin campus, held the papers of Sigrid Schultz, a spunky correspondent for the 'Chicago Tribune' who became one of Martha Dodd's friends in Berlin.
First and foremost, telling historical stories is very tricky because it is something that is known. It is not like you can tell a lie or change something that is written in black and white.
A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah.
The number of elements that have to go into a hit would break a computer down. the right season for that play, the right historical moment, the right tonality.
I have known Evo Morales for many years, since the days of the union movement. From a historical and sociological standpoint, the election of Evo Morales is extraordinary, with great prospects and potential for the Bolivian people.
I was in a number of school plays, one in particular, when I was 13 or 14, entitled 'Illusions.' It was put together by one of the teachers, and was about famous historical figures. I had to do the Martin Luther King 'I have a dream' speech, and some black women in the audience were clapping and crying and whooping.
To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event.
I did something that no brown-skinned man in the movie industry ever did. I made a brown-skinned man look very romantic - a matinee idol. If you think about it, what I introduced is historical because it had never happened before, and it hasn't happened since - not on that level.
There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation.
There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They're like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages.
As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force, I have long sought to preserve the river's health and historical multiple uses, including as a natural waterway and a home to wildlife, for the benefit of future generations of Americans.
We want to overcome our historical problems with Chile. The sea has divided us and the sea must bring us back together again. Chile has agreed, for the first time, to talk about sea access for Bolivia.
Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.
If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact.
You always try to do your own thing. One of the things I wanted to do was to write a book that combines some of the best traits of contemporary fantasy with some of the traits of the historical novel.
As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
I did a great deal of research to write 'The Irish Duke.' Since all the people in this Lords of the Realm series are real historical characters, everything had to be authentic. I researched Woburn Abbey, where my heroine lived, and everything about Barons Court in Ireland, which was the ancestral home of Abercorn.
Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.
Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.
There is a vulgar incredulity, which in historical matters, as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine.
The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
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.
Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.
Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.
I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handedly revolutionized the political, artistic, and historical discourses about America.
I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.
