Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I write novels, mostly historical ones, and I try hard to keep them accurate as to historical facts, milieu and flavor.
All the spookiness comes from giving a contemporary anachronistic sense to terms whose historical meaning is lost to us.
As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.
Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.
The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West.
I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.
The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
One little person, giving all of her time to peace, makes news. Many people, giving some of their time, can make history.
Actually, the only thing I regret is not making more underground films and bringing them with me as historical documents.
The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
I can not be mistaken - what I say and do is historical.I follow my life with the precision and security of a sleep walker
The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.
Abandoned by philosophy, politics, and sociology, historical determinism continues to hold out in formalist art criticism.
Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.
Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.
Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.
I always tell students that the first question to ask about any historical action is this: who makes money out of the deal?
Thus, in setting an American agenda for a New World Order, we must begin with a profound alteration in traditional thought.
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
We British play an important role in Europe, even if we have a traditional and historical ambivalence towards the continent.
Susanne Alleyn's Game of Patience is a well-crafted historical mystery, authentic in every detail. Wonderfully entertaining.
Memmius would only be useless to him for a short time, but that he would remain useless to himself and the Republic forever.
On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. It's a projective thing.
The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer.
I would say to the new leadership the American people are ready to meet you if you move forward toward the path of democracy.
Co-mingling really disturbs a lot of the purists, who want to see the historical and cultural divides instead of the meshing.
What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.
The Rothschilds have conquered the world more thoroughly, more cunningly, and much more lastingly than all the Caesars before.
Just because a company falls doesn't invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.
It's such an extraordinary time to be alive that you just don't want to miss it. I mean, it's a really neat historical period.
I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world.
Sometimes there are historical moments when a country's course could be turned one way or the other, when fate can be escaped.
I did not intend for there to be an incisive historical lesson in 'North and South.' Basically, it's just a good, juicy story.
Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.
I'm sorry to say it has some historical analogs. It's kind of reminiscent of what happened in Germany in the late Weimar years.
It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction.
Most architects work in studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and historical research were irrelevant.
There is no more fascinating subject in which a person may become occupied than an examination into the history of his ancestry.
The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.
We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.
Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.
Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.
History unfolds itself by strange and unpredictable paths. We have little control over the future; and none at all over the past.
Contemporary audiences, other than those making a deliberate historical leap, would find, say, the 1931 'Dracula' impossibly slow.
Fortifications, artillery, foreign aid - will be of no value, unless the ordinary soldier knows that it is HE guarding his country
Most architects work in studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and historical research were irrelevant.
Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.