I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.
Serious biographies need to have a historical base in facts.
What I found was when I started my first study, and then in subsequent studies, is here you have people under some kind of duress, or I chose to study them because they represented some kind of historical event, as it impacted on them or as they helped to create it.
I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?' Anything in my books that is in quotes comes from some kind of living historical document: a letter, a memoir, a court transcript, a newspaper interview.
The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise.
There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.
Typically, historical black colleges and universities like Delaware State, attracted students who were raised in an environment where going to college wasn't the next natural step after high school.
Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic.
That one woman is capable of loving another is an historical truth; but never yet lived one who could not listen to her own praises at the expense of her adored friend.
Jewish persecution is a historical memory of the present generation and people fear it in the present day, and that's why those references are so much more powerful. I just understand that better now.
A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.
I've played all kinds of historical characters, but they are stuck in movies that aren't their movies.
The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles.
I like storytelling movies and more than that I like historical movies; and I think someday I'll definitely make a movie about the past 50 years history.
It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of historical study, since it gained a place analogous to that of natural science.
I visit English country churchyards where historical figures are buried.
I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.
I believe it has been said that one copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
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.
With honesty of purpose, balance, a respect for tradition, courage, and, above all, a philosophy of life, any young person who embraces the historical profession will find it rich in rewards and durable in satisfaction.
My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.
If I'm writing about a modern-day suburb, there's going to be details of the home and furniture, and if I'm writing about a historical period, those details, those pieces of the world are going to be there as well, but they'll be simplified, because I'm cartooning it.
One lesson is that if you want to predict voter turnout, you should ask whether at least one candidate is attracting high levels of enthusiasm - not whether the stakes are high, or even perceived to be high. That fits the historical pattern.
Through historical accident, we've ended up with a global network that pretty much allows anybody to communicate with anyone else at any time.
I think I honestly invented my own genre, the historical spy novel.
The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.
In 2007, I did a horseback trip across part of central Mongolia with my 13-year-old son - we encountered Marco Polo at all these historical places where Mongolian nomads would reference his accounts and his relationship with Kublai Khan.
Species go extinct because there are historical contraints built into a given body or a given design.
We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.
The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.
Presently, the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History has been brought about to encourage and sponsor a variety of historical activities that advance our understanding of the American Jewish experience as it marks this milestone anniversary.
I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.
Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.
If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.
I can think of films that I'm producing right now that are extremely hard-hitting, graphic films, that nobody necessarily wants to see, graphic in terms of violence, of adult content and racial and historical subject matter.
