Historical Fiction Quotes

You are intelligent, you are diplomatic, you are beautiful, and you are and always will be...[he kisses her]...MINE...

~ Neil Jordan

Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance, it may be said that in proper hands it has been and should continue to be one of the most valued and valuable expressions of the literary art. To render and maintain it so, however, it is necessary that certain well-defined limits should be set upon the licence which its writers are to enjoy; it is necessary that the work should be honest work; that preparation for it should be made by a sound, painstaking study of the period to be represented, to the end that a true impression may first be formed and then conveyed. Thus, considering how much more far-reaching is the novel than any other form of literature, the good results that must wait upon such endeavours are beyond question. The neglect of them—the distortion of character to suit the romancer's ends, the like distortion of historical facts, the gross anachronisms arising out of a lack of study, have done much to bring the historical romance into disrepute.

~ Rafael Sabatini

I know not by what power I am drawn to you, but it is as a moth is drawn to the flame, and I cannot fight it, I must be consumed.

~ Andrea Zuvich

Sea and land may lie between us, but my heart is always there with you.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

She is a jewel far richer than a mountain of coin could bring!

~ Andrea Zuvich

Whenever doubts become a crime... whenever parents become afraid their children might turn them in; a country where the power of the government is mired inextricably with the jurisdiction and the executive, where you have three secret polices spying on the population and people disappear without a word, that is not my country... My country and Nazi Germany, those are two very different places. And I dearly hope I’ll live to see the day when the latter one falls.

~ Osiris Brackhaus

Moonlight does things to a street scene that no other natural or man-made phenomenon can effect. People walk slower, their smiles lingering on contended faces. Horses that usually move along fast enough to stir up the dust off the street plod lazily in the clear, cool night. And in dark corners where people forget to look, the goons come out.

~ Bailey Bristol

I have lived recklessly, gambled my income away at the horse races, gone whoring, have been more drunk than sober, beaten men to a pulp with my hands, have had a man’s nose cut off for insulting my father and have been indebted to villains more times than I care to say. But, I do not want to live like this anymore. I want a quiet life with a good woman who will care and love me – not for being the Duke of Monmouth, but for me, Jemmy.

~ Andrea Zuvich

Today’s breakfast consist of rice and a piece of bread fried in a bit of salt pork grease. At least I have my memories of grand banquets and fine foods, but this is all the children have ever known. I suppose it is best not to have anything to compare.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

The curtains were not yet drawn and with the moonlight spreading across the room, I could see clearly. I undressed and slipped a soft cotton gown over my naked body. I pulled the blanket off the foot of my bed, covered my shoulders and wa...lked out on the balcony. The cool night air blowing through my hair served as a reminder that only a hint of summer remained in this year of 1860.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

I stop to brace myself against the walls, which are painted with the fingerprints of family.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

Before I disappear behind the door, I stop and turn around to look at him.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

According to Robert, his friend Moses was a soldier in the first war, as he described it. He fought Indians and soldiers in red coats.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

The sun had just slipped behind the trees and evening cast its dark, smoky shadow.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

I can hear my steps echo as I follow him to the end of the hall. The door to the small closet under the steps is standing ajar. He closes the door and latches it.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

It was a warm and natural feeling to be there. We were not black or white people. We were just people bound together by love and understanding. As I walked out of that church, I felt like I had rediscovered my inner peace.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

The pages that follow will be our journey of the life we built together here in Concord, North Carolina. These pages will reveal fragments from the past and events that occurred along the way.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

‎He smiled at me and I felt the tenderness only a daughter could feel.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

He is dressed in a long, white robe and in his hand is a white cap. I draw up as he passes down the hall; he does not see me. Shortly I hear a horse leaving. There is much I do not know about him, but tonight I know one of his secrets. He is a midnight rider.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

It seemed ironic to her that women were considered far too meek for the morbidity of war, and yet a child could give their life in a battle they did not even understand.

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

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!

~ Gwenn Wright

Elsa's mother no longer spoke to her of men and love, but of duty and fate and accepting one’s burden. As far as Elsa could tell, if love really was the inherited female domain, then women were saddled with the biggest burden of all. It was pressing down upon them, the way the sea pressed down upon the creatures of the deep.

~ Kathy-Diane Leveille

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?

~ Hilary Mantel

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

~ J. Dylan Yates

Jealousy is nothing but a fear of being abandoned

~ Heidi Heilig

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

~ Hermann Rauschning

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?

~ Madeline Miller

The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.

~ Pat Miller

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.

~ Neal Stephenson

He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot.We were about to become cigarettes.

~ Ruta Sepetys

True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.

~ Alexandre Dumas

Roger speaking to Brianna: It's too important. You don't forget having a dad.You do remember your father?No. I remember yours.

~ Diana Gabaldon

Fairy tales only happen in movies. -George Meliesfrom The Invention of Hugo Cabret

~ Brian Selznick

I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?

~ Philippa Gregory

Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.

~ Philippa Gregory

Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart

~ Norman Mailer

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

~ Leila Meacham

Never bet your money on another man's game.

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

lightning thief was good but the sea of monsters is better and has more action!

~ Rick Riordan

I decided to write the book I wanted to read

~ David A. Lottes