Historical Fiction Quotes - Page 2

But the living must fear death, or they would not struggle to stay alive. from 'The Fallen Kings.

Matthew shook his head. “Whoever said anything of women in the Victorian era being prim and proper apparently hadn’t met Maxine Fleming.”Tahatan chuckled. “I’m sure a publisher somewhere would make a nice fortune with putting this into print. The fact is, people tend to look back on bygone times through rose-colored glasses. All eras have encouraged values that are pushed on the surface, but in the end, people are still people.

Not strictly one of mine, but worth repeating! A very forceful old lady in these parts, when referring to the eight novels of the Angel Mountain Saga,was heard to say: "You know them books by that fellow Brian John? If I was you I wouldn't believe a single word. Take it from me. It's lies -- all lies!

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid.

The Baptist Church rejects man with wooden leg: It appears the Baptist preacher refused to baptize a veteran of the late war in the holy water- saying they only baptize flesh and blood, not wood.

You’re a lady. It’s written all over you, but the West doesn’t forgive any woman-unless she’s got a man.

Lightening flashed again and again but above the shriek of the wind and the pounding hail they never heard the thunder.

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?” In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board.

Oh, she's still here;she's just not as pretty... anymore.

He could inspire ballads. He could inspire wars.

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

Midnight Omen Deja vu" - Because everyone should experience love in the Caribbean...at least once in a lifetime.

Holding the bread to her chest, she made her way home, thinking of those dreamy winter afternoons, when the light looked as it did now, the crystalline blue of the sky slipping into a faded purple, as faint as a bruise.

Where are these fucking guns coming from?

Before you're ready to tell that story well, you might have to study and learn the equivalent of an entire specialized college education on the society in which your story takes place, because all sorts of things were happening that you need to understand before you can even begin to tell a story in that milieu.

I could faintly smell the ocean. I imagined being one of the old oak trees standing there swaying in the wind and braving all sorts of weather. I pondered what they had seen in the past and what they might see in the future

We cannot save everyone, can we?’ I said to her as we continued walking on our way. I turned my head back only to find the spot the beggar had occupied empty. ‘Not everyone,’ she said. She took my hand once more in hers, kissed the back of it, and finished one of the sincerest axioms I had heard in sometime. ‘We must save,’ she said, ‘only the ones we can while we can.’Leila Bakr, in A TIME TO LOVE IN TEHRAN, and speaking to her love, John Lockwood

One night when the moon was full, I explained to you about how the moon controls the tides, and you said I was like the moon and you were the sea, always following me about. And I said nothing, because I knew it was truly the other way around.

I would be no more than a shadow of myself if I thought that I had truly lost you.

I have come to think that's where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

Soeur Seraphina gently removed my lace fontanges. It was named for the King’s mistress Angelique de Fontanges, who had lost her hat while hunting one day and had hastily tied up her curls with her garter. The King had admired the effect, and the next day all the court ladies had appeared with their curls tied back with lace

He wondered where the difference was between the good guys and the bad guys if their means were all just born out of perceived necessity and their goals by the unquestioned orders they had been given.

Did you ever hear the one about how every living woman dies three times? Once when she is seduced of her virginity, once when she is seduced of her freedom (I believe they call it marriage), and once when she is seduced of her husband.

Sonetimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

Men may fight the battle, but women wage the war.

I could not give her my heart, because it already belonged to another; for I have only loved once.

she was like the merlin in pursuit of its airborne quarry, perhaps the snow bunting or a small meadow pipit; the avian prey is nimble but so is the predatory merlin with its inexhaustible stamina and unparalleled agility – round and round it chases the pipit, and the two flying at speeds almost impossible for the observer to follow.

Lucille, please make them go away!” she moaned, her voice muffled.t“Do you think I am a divine being sent from the celestial realm to guard you from the harsh punishment of rousing from your slumber?” t“Is that a yes?”t“I am surrounded by idiots.

No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he would call out 'Glory be' and set her up in a house and visit her every day, until the novelty wore off. Nothing is forbidden to George, you see. He'd go to it with a terrier bitch if she wagged her tail at him and said bow-wow.'For once he is struck silent. He knows he will never get it out of his mind, the picture of George in a hairy grapple with a little ratting dog.

What, did you think," she asked, laughing as he struggled up the bank, "that I, a Gaulish maiden, could not swim?" "I did not think anything about it," Malchus said; "I saw you pushed in and followed without thinking at all." Although they imperfectly understood each other's words the meaning was clear; the girl put her hand on his shoulder and looked frankly up in his face. "I thank you," she said, "just the same as if you had saved my life. You meant to do so, and it was very good of you, a great chief of this army, to hazard your life for a Gaulish maiden. Clotilde will never forget.

So why had he come? He'd said he'd had no choice, but for centuries men had chopped off their own limbs, faked insanity, gone into hiding or to prison rather than to war. Was there some dark flaw in his psyche? Did he have some perverse need to destroy? To kill?

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.

The old law of an eye for an eye didn’t make them blind to the fact that another man’s terrorist wasn’t their freedom fighter.

Tethered to the universe by tendrils of history, with threads of continuity descending to God knows where, I see that I'm more than the dust I'll become." This quote is from my novel, "Whispers from St. Mary's Well." Many readers have said that, like the fictional narrator of the story, Carrie Rose Stillwell, they felt a deep connection to the universe through past, present, and future experiences, after reading the story of a child who communicates with future generations.

Writing is an act of faith. One must believe and see people who are invisible to others and be faithful to tell half formed stories. It’s like being on the trail of an apparition who’s repeatedly just out of reach.K. Youngblood

William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn't understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.

The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.

Nobody hates us as ourselves. In their minds we're not human... They don't hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want to kill it in us.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

In time of war, it is not enough to say, ‘I am a citizen and I have rights.’ One must also say, ‘I am a citizen and I have obligations.

A man's pride will cause him to do things you never dreamed possible. He got fired up about being right and blocked out everything else.

Page 158: 'Architecture is team work,' said Sinan. 'Apprenticeship is not.''Why don't you want us to look at each other's drawings? ' Jahan once asked.'Because you'll compare. If you think you are better than the others, you'll be poisoned by hubris. If you think another's better, poisoned by envy. Either way, it is poison.

Both slaves had been oiled until their flesh shined like polished ebony, outlining every detail of their muscles.

Forget the threat of Hell's infernal flames. The true torture would condemn a man to wait and wait and wait - for an eternity

Some writers don't believe they're ready to begin writing the story until they've finished all the research they can think of to do — until they're sure of everything. That's a logical approach, of course. The more factual knowledge, the less likelihood you'll have to throw out a lot of glorious prose when you find out that something you assumed to be true wasn't.But one problem with delaying your start until the research is all done is that the research is never all done.

You think I started out like this?Well, I didn't.I started out like anyone else - young and hopeful. I started out arrogant and in love, assuming the whole dizzy world was where it should be: at my feet. I started out - well, I started out a little like you.

I guess I'd rather have a truthful neighbor who says he hates me than a lyin' one who claims he loves me.

Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.

How easy it is to do wrong when there is someone else to blame.

I make up as little as possible. I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see where the contradictions are and to look where things have gone missing. And it's really in the gap - it's in the erasures - that I think the novelist can best go to work because inevitably in history in any period, we know a lot about what happened, but we may be far hazier on why it happened. And there's always the question, why did it happen the way it did? Where was the turning point?

From my Facebook Page: "You spend the first 50 years acquiring and the second 50 years getting rid of

Making friends is not a big deal. Replacing me with them after talking to them for only one bloody day is a big deal.

Stuff and nonsense: you must regard this deviationfrom your plan as part of the adventure that you soughtwhen you decided embark on it in the first place. Trueadventure does not follow well-trodden paths. Absenceof certainty is its essence. People, like you and I, whochoose to shun the mundane must not only expect, butalso enjoy and profit from surprises.

It is dark and there are bad creatures in these woods.""Yes, there are...

When we decided to move West, I worried about how to defend my family and my stock from Indians, but I never worried about inheriting one!”--from Prairie Grace when Georgia's father Thomas realizes gravely ill Gray Wolf has been left at their doorstep

I understand, gentlemen,” John Kennedy said. “If you find that life it’s not easy, let me tell you, death is worse.

Why else do we write and write except to move our readers?

I was too far away to hear what was said but I saw in Val’s eyes the same fear that I had once known and could well guess at Lucas’ unthinking remark.

All good things originate with the Creator God, he'd been taught, and the Song of Life was no exception.

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.