Historical Fiction Quotes - Page 3

What takes more courage. To live ... or to die?

In Sing Sing Prison, in a ghastly white room stands a chair. Its parts are heavy joinings of oak, riveted and screwed together; its strong legs fastened to the floor with teeth and claws of steel. It bites into the marrow of men with fangs of fire. For this is the faldstool of bloody human justice, the prayer-chair of man’s vengeance upon man. Into it are strapped ... men who have killed other men. In it, for a high moral purpose, erring human lives are shocked across the barrier into night and the grave. - Edward H. Smith (1918)

I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!”I had turned to call back to him, “I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!

As sorry as I feel for myself, I feel even sorrier for her. I know she's afraid of staying and equally as frightened of going. Just as this land is a part of me, this house is a part of her. Selling off these things piece by piece is like cutting away chunks of her heart. I promised to make it better, but only God knows whether or not that's a promise I'll be able to keep.

I don't know, Benes. I'm not sure I've ever really understood women for that kind of commitment.' He flipped his beer mat up int the air with his index finger and caught it in his hand.

The Death House back then was a self-contained unit, with its own hospital, kitchen, exercise yard and visiting room. The cells were inadequate, dark, and did not have proper sanitary facilities or ventilation. One window and skylight furnished the ventilation and light of the entire unit. Twelve cells were on the lower tier, six on each side, facing each other, with a narrow corridor between them. Five cells were located in an upper tier. There was an area the prisoners called the Dance Hall that housed a prisoner to be executed on his last day. The narrow corridor connected the Dance Hall to the execution room, where the Electric Chair resided. The prisoners named this corridor the Last Mile or the Green Mile, because this was the last walk a prisoner would take all the way to the small green riveted door at the end of the corridor, on his way to the execution room.

I’m a soldier. Believe me when I say that the greatest weapon anyone can use is not the sword but love. One day the world will see that and it won’t need men like me anymore.”-Antoine (from Twiceborn)

She didn't know how she would survive when every breath stung, every tear burned, and every step took her further from the only man she'd ever loved.

Brother," Artemis chided. "You do not help my hunters. You do not look at, talk to, or flirt with my Hunters. And you do not call them sweetheart.

This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray.""Go astray?""Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure.

When you live in my house, you learn to be fine with whatever you come across. It's the only way to stay sane in insanity.

You’ll likely always have some reason or other to hang onto that girl. You just want her cause she was married to your son, and I understand that, he was a friend to me like a brother, near the only family I ever knew, and I miss him almost as much as you. But I need me a woman.

You are both daring and unscrupulous, and you think fast. I have been looking for a person with those particular characteristics. Also I noticed you speak Babylonian.

Sheftu,” she whispered, “it's all over.”“Nay, little one. It's just beginning. Many things are beginning.

As the sun lowered into the city's skyline, casting an orange glow over the islands, Jana could feel people's hopes rising.

I decided to write the book I wanted to read

The never-ending ache of love and sorrow.

I said to my mother, Henry VII is interesting. No he's not, my mother said.

You are not by any manner of means the sort of woman I am in search of as a wife, and I am in a totally different universe from the husband you hope to find. But I feel a powerful urge to kiss you, for all that.

I am looking through a lace curtain at a dead man's feet. I am ten years old, the mist is rising on a fall morning in 1944 in Sawyer, Georgia, and I am standing on a front porch painted gray with white trim.

He didn't know what he was anymore – not truly Chinese, for he had spent too long in the West, adopted too many Western ideas, but neither did he feel truly Westernised. There had been times when he had thought himself so, but a glimpse at his reflection quickly showed him the impossibility of such thoughts. No, rather, he felt suspended between two worlds, never to truly belong to either. The Yellow Papers

I realize that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me.

Every great day has a story and a song!

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.

I took my friend’s hand as she helped me up. With our hands still linked and our flower crowns tangled in our hair, we danced, laughing with joy, through the rain and towards the school, the lightning showing us our path with its powerful light.

What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.

A twinge of fear entered Gwenwhyfar’s heart. It was the first she had heard of the sea farms lying in the path of danger. She wondered what had befallen a different Norseman of her acquaintance. Had her poor bodyguard, Finn, perished in one of those raids?

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.

Once the spark of true love has been ignited, it cannot be quenched. It is there forever.

It's said truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction makes truth a friend, not a stranger.

Darcy looked at Graham for the first time in months, and realized that her memory had not done him justice. He was gold and bronze, perfect like a statue. His eyes were ice blue. They were eyes that could pierce a man's resolve, and probably had many times. But not now. Now they assessed her, ice fading to liquid sky...

Most of these people are not going anywhere, and have nothing meaningful to do. They are zombies seeking purpose in an environment that cannot provide it. This is why, at the slightest public commotion, they quickly form their mobs, like a swarm of flies seeking shit on which to settle. But I did not come here to give a lecture. I came here to look for you.

The wolf had begun hunting human prey. They were plentiful in the dark city streets and provided enough good meat to satiate his gnawing hunger. He was still very careful not to let any who saw him live. To do otherwise would displease the Master. He would only stalk those people that were foolish enough to walk alone in the night

How things change,’ I say, ‘how strange that, even when all is lost, we can still find beauty in simple things.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

He spent the next hours watching her sleep, taking in every detail of her face, of her body. The way the soft glow of the bedside lamp cast shadows on her cheeks. The way her chest rose and fell with each breath. And when the first light of dawn finally showed through the gap in the curtains he quietly dressed and turned off the bedside lamp, and left the room, not daring to look back.

I'm learning not to hope for what I can't control...

Alana Marks had always known she was different. From her gypsy childhood, to the way she now made her living in the movies, she'd always lived on the edge. She'd been paid to leap from a sixteenth story window, roll a car to a cliff edge, get thrown off a speeding train and dragged into a river by a runaway horse. At the moment, she was about to set herself on fire and jump out of a burning barn.

For the first time in years, I have vivid dreams, vivid enough to count the stars and the number of ripples in the sea.

This isn't London, sweetheart. This is New York City and we can spot a fraud from a mile away.

Love, I think, is by necessity constructed of a ladder of lies you climb together.

Oscar always said that books are truly our best friends. He said that they never think poorly of us and that they always have a shoulder for us to cry on or relieve stress. They take our minds away from the real world by telling us captivating stories. When we look back at our choice of books, we can nostalgically recall our younger years.

Next time -- we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren!

All things in Fiji are paid for in blood.

I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under ones own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such.

silly man. I know the man I am marrying is destined for great things, as the many remarkable things he has done thus far have brought himto such a high oint already. Mark my words, Alex. You are a man whose future lies before him for all to marvel at one day. And you, Colonel Hamilton, are mine, and I am yours always.

Mama says love is a sickness of the heart. Only the weak fall under its spell.

In light of my distanced telescopic exposure to the mayhem, I refused to plagiarise others’ personal tragedies as my own. There is an authorship in misery that costs more than empathy. Often I’d found myself dumbstruck in failed attempts to simulate that particular unfamiliar dolour. After all, no one takes pleasure in being possessed by a wailing father collecting the decapitated head of his innocent six year old. Even on the hinge of a willing attempt at full empathy with those cursed with such catastrophes, one had to have a superhuman emotional powers. I could not, in any way, claim the ability to relate to those who have been forced to swallow the never-ending bitter and poisonous pills of our inherited misfortune. Yet that excruciating pain in my chest seemed to elicit a state of agony in me, even from far behind the telescope. It could have been my tribal gene amplified by the ripple effect of the falling, moving in me what was left of my humanity.

People spoke in whispers, as if the war was listening

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

Conformity is deformity

Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn

I cannot tell you how exciting it is when you first see your book in paperback, then when the good reviews roll in it is just the red bow on the present under the tree.

Thomas slammed his fist on the table, sending eating utensils flying. “Shameful! It is downright shameful that so-called men of God would use religion to manipulate people.”--from Prairie Grace when Thomas learns how the Indian agents and others are stealing from Native Americans

{Summertime she speaks of winter, she eats ham, but speaks of beef, got a good man but, flirts with another. She might as well go to hell, cause she ain't gonna be happy in heaven either!}

Step into the fire of self-discovery. This fire will not burn you. It will only burn what you are not, - Rumi

As the children left, Antonio shifted his gaze towards his father and gently waved at his family, while they returned the gesture.With half a smile and a tight lip, Antonio’s green eyes spoke, “Adiós” (“Good-bye”).Then, he turned and walked towards the green metal door of the steam cargo vessel that swallowed him away.

What to do now, Father? I am going to die like a killer, and I do not even remember killing.”“You can pray, my son. You are in the hands of God now,” said the good priest.

Children worked in the mills: "I will always believe that children are designed for green meadows and play, not for factories and cotton dust.

SHE RESEARCHED WHEN everyone slept. In the dead silence, her mind worked with more clarity. No interruptions, no worries. Sometimes she even imagined that her ancestors guided her. That they reached out from the past to share their stories. “Hocus Pocus!” she thought, smiling. Her inside joke was a source of inspiration. But her imagination was not far-fetched.My second cousin, twice removed, is a family historian. She is also a lawyer. And this is why I chose her. I needed her to do me a favor. I chose her, although she is a business lawyer and not a criminal lawyer. That was fine by me. It’s not like my lawyers did a superb job at defending me. I was wrongfully executed.