Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.
What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?
Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.