Historical Fiction Quotes

I have to stress that my duties towards victims of all sorts, be it helping, taking their side, or caring, ends the moment their status becomes a bargaining chip. The moment the victim becomes a righteous sufferer. For in my short time on this planet, history and on-going affairs are full of those competing in victimhood.

~ Asaad Almohammad

It's their failure, my little Anna, not yours. Men who try to understand the world without the help of children are like men who try to bake bread without the help of yeast.

~ Gavriel Savit

Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs... Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance?

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Writing is the Art, re-writing the craft.

~ O'brien Browne

Of all God’s creatures, only man kills with malice. Only man kills out of vengeance.

~ R.h.dickinson

Capital dictates the fate of humanity.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you've never found yourself in it?

~ Sherry D. Ficklin

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.

~ Hilary Mantel

Its magnificence was indescribable, and its magnitude was inconceivable. She felt overwhelmed in the presence of its greatness. Pg 87

~ Mona Rodriguez

Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).

~ Mona Rodriguez

Selene’s life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women’s equality hasn’t always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today, there have been setbacks before and may be more in the future.

~ Stephanie Dray

Even the most egregious captive state, bound and gagged on her damp bunk, felt eerily familiar to her. With nothing to do but lie there and think of things, she reflected that captivity took many different forms. A woman under the domination of her father or husband was as much a prisoner as a hostage on a boat. She had merely traded one form of servitude for another.

~ Susan Wiggs

I am afraid, my dear niece, that a ‘mere woman’ is something you most certainly are not.

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

As their figures recede, it strikes Filsan as ironic that they had delayed fleeing so they could take as many of their possessions as possible, but now those very possessions prevent their flight.

~ Nadifa Mohamed

I remember the great feeling of sadness to have left many of our brothers behind in a foreign land, but as I sat on the rowing bench, alongside Hengist and Yffi, as the Famous Horse sailed over the gentle waves, I couldn't help but feel excited of what was to come. Yet none of us could have predicted that we were sailing towards a head -on-collision with the Roman General, Flavius Aëtius and his Hun allies, where Hengist and I would come face to face with the legendary Siegfried the Dragon Slayer and the one they call Attila the Hun!

~ S.a. Swaffington

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

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

Their eyes locked.They could see into each other's souls. This was why she had been bored.

~ Marion Croslydon

Between the sands of time and tradition is a multitude of truths untold.

~ J.e. Cross

You must regard this deviation from your plan as part of the adventure that you sought when you decided to embark on it in the first place...Absence of certainty is its essence. People...who choose to shun the mundane must not only expect, but also enjoy and profit from surprises.

~ Adam Yamey

The typewriter is indeed my passport into a world otherwise barred to me and my kind.

~ Suzanne Rindell

I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defense I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915.

~ Laurie R. King

A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” “Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.” Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. “Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.

~ Gwenn Wright

Life is volatile.

~ Robert J. Pajer

How men fear the chaos of the world, I thought, and the yawning eternity hereafter. So we build patterns to explain its terrible mysteries and reassure ourselves we are safe in this world and beyond.

~ C.j. Sansom

What had these people done to deserve a band of desperate rebels turning up on their doorsteps, and now more trouble! Yet, what had any of them done, what gods had they displeased to deserve the calamity that was the Romans?

~ Margaret Mcgoverne

She had very much looked forward to a word in private with him. But she forgot, as she usually did, the silence that always came between them in these latter years, whenever they found themselves alone.The queer sensation in her chest, however, was all too familiar, that mix of pleasure and pain, never one without the other.She could have done without those feelings. She would have happily gone her entire life never experiencing the pangs of longing and the futility of regret. He made her human—or as human as she was capable of being. And being human was possibly her least favorite aspect of life.

~ Sherry Thomas

I reckon it’s true what they say that good begets good and bad begets bad. The evil men do lives on after them, but what good they done gets buried with their bones.

~ Lisa Kaye Presley

The wiry man scratched his head, looked the two inquisitors up and down and cleared his throat softly. “We must be quick.” He turned to go, pulling his cloak over his head and shuffling through the door into the moonlight. The two inquisitors moved with impossible silence behind, floating across the straw-covered floor like the cats on the walls outside the hut. The cats froze at the disturbance before scurrying noiselessly into the shadows as the three silhouettes crossed the ten yards of grass before the blackness of the forest swallowed them. No fires flickered at this time, when the full moon was highest in the cloudless summer sky, and the three were the only waking souls in the hamlet.

~ Gregory Figg

If Miss Elton spoke water instead of words, then there would have been a repetition of Noah’s flood.

~ Kellyn Roth

I’m an idiot for trying to avoid these feelings because they have caused me pain in the past.

~ Kellyn Roth

LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.

~ Lauren Willig

It would be, like all of Pammy's parties, hot and crowded and filled with impossibly glamorous people with hip bones so sharp they could qualify as concealed weapons.

~ Lauren Willig

You can only chase a butterfly for so long.

~ Jane Yolen

She says it is a school for bluestockings which, according to her, is really only a fashionable way of saying it is a school for ugly girls who cannot find suitable husbands. To tease her, for I believe it is one of his greatest pleasures in this life, my father bought a pair of blue silk stockings for me the day we received my letter of acceptance. That evening and the next, father and I dined alone.

~ Gwenn Wright

Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wicked looking to capture the heart of any sensible young man.

~ Gwenn Wright

It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him.

~ Gwenn Wright

A glance would not be enough to tell you this was the daughter of Katherine Raquel Demure. Even a lingering gaze would not suffice. No. Only careful study of the original and a comparative inspection of her only child would even hint at a relation between the two. Viktor could see it and knew, beyond doubt, that Henrietta not only saw it but was also vexed by it on a daily basis.

~ Gwenn Wright

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?

~ Jennifer Mckeithen

I look up and watch the bad parts of me shrinking to dots in the wide blue.

~ Lauren Nicolle Taylor

And if he was kind and friendly and funny, and if he told you about places so beautiful that you wanted to go with him to see them, and if he listened to you talk like he actually cared about what you were saying? And if he tried to protect you when other people tried to tell you what to do, as if they owned you? And if he has the handsomest face you've ever seen, no matter if the skin has been damaged, because he's just lovely even so?

~ Caroline Leech