Historical Fiction Quotes

History tells us what people do, historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.

~ Guy Vanderhaeghe

Dragons don't ask for maidens, he said. Dragons are offered maidens. Alys shook her head to show she didn't understand.Is a king likely to be a maiden? Or a village headman? It's the men who make the laws that decree that maidens be offered.

~ Vivian Vande Velde

Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. - Captain Roque Carnicero

~ Gabriel García Márquez

The porcelain doll residing in her white-pillared dollhouse was a mirage.

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

Julia Woodhull was many things: a lady of secrets, a patriot’s niece, and a dead man’s daughter. But one thing Julia Woodhull was most certainly not was a fool.

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

He who whets his steel, whets his courage.

~ Steven Pressfield

An American Family Sampler is a book any reader will find insightful, thoroughly researched, and fun to read. Robert Frump, author, award winning journalist, business leader

~ Donald Mazzella

He said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being. -Jean Valjean about Cossette-

~ Victor Hugo

It was all her doing. She had cried wolf and the wolf had come.

~ Jason Hewitt

Six wives the King's had now.' Barak's words dragged me from my reverie. 'We can't even get one between us.

~ C.j. Sansom

He said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being. He said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being. -Jean Valjean about Cossette-

~ Victor Hugo

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe

~ Dorothy Dunnett

Moron, your bus is leaving-from Groundhogs Day Bill Murray

~ Aimee' Bejarano

Rumors are the children of truth.

~ Danny M. Cohen

I guess I'd rather have a truthful neighbor who says he hates me than a lyin' one who claims he loves me.

~ David Hopper

Yessir, some things is sin 'cause God says so. Some things is sin 'cause they hurt other people. And some things is just pure-dee stupid.

~ David Hopper

I’m not trying to start an argument with you,” William assured him. “I suppose I don’t know what it’s like to be a true revolutionary, though I think I’ve held some…similar…ideals. At times. Thought I could change things, if I fought hard enough.”“What did you try to change?”“Myself, in hopes that it would change others’ opinions of me.”“That is a bit more selfish than what we aspire to,” Luis clarified.William shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I pressed others to change as well. Guess I just didn’t fight hard enough for any of it.

~ T.l. Walker

Not strictly one of mine, but worth repeating! A very forceful old lady in these parts, when referring to the eight novels of the Angel Mountain Saga,was heard to say: You know them books by that fellow Brian John? If I was you I wouldn't believe a single word. Take it from me. It's lies -- all lies!

~ Brian John

I aim to make the fiction flexible so that it bends itself around the facts as we have them. Otherwise I don’t see the point. Nobody seems to understand that. Nobody seems to share my approach to historical fiction. I suppose if I have a maxim, it is that there isn’t any necessary conflict between good history and good drama.

~ Hilary Mantel

A little man in a threadbare coat spoke up for the poor as if he really knew what he was talking about. The women with the flowers threw them down for him. “That’s Robert Speer,” one said. “Something like that. He’s our man.

~ Marge Piercy

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

~ Hilary Mantel

Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artifact of your mental illness.

~ Hilary Mantel

She was as lovely as ever, my Jessie Anne. I paused for a moment, taking her beauty in, laying up this vision of her in the deepest and most secret place of my mind, allowing the sight of her to renew my spirit. I stepped slowly down to the platform, never allowing my gaze to drift from her. Jessie Anne was looking toward the front of the car, and it was a moment or two before she turned and spotted me.The bright and hopeful smile I had so expected and longed for darkened, just for a moment to be sure, but long enough for me to recognize a fleeting glimpse of shock and anguish, possibly of horror. No longer did she see the man she had known, the man she had given her life to. No, she saw me for the man I truly was, the man with blood on his hands.

~ Karl A. Bacon

Aaron reached into his jacket pocket and took out his Bible, a gift from his father, Captain Benjamin K. Matthews, on the the day he had ridden off to war. Aaron opened to the Psalms, intending to read, but his eyes were heavy and closed against his will. O death, where is thy sting? Pastor Blackwell had told him that death had no power over him, but he sure felt that sting now. O grave, where is thy victory? How much longer would it be? Just four miles from home. Would Mama ever know?Shiloh, the place of peace. Good ground to die on. Holy ground.

~ Karl A. Bacon

When we decided to move West, I worried about how to defend my family and my stock from Indians, but I never worried about inheriting one!”--from Prairie Grace when Georgia's father Thomas realizes gravely ill Gray Wolf has been left at their doorstep

~ Marilyn Bay Wentz

The empire long united must divide, long divided must unite; this is how it has always been.

~ Luo Guanzhong

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

~ Marilyn Bay Wentz

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.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

All of my books are acts of subversion disguised as historical fiction.

~ Kelly Gardiner

The greatest gift you can give an author is turning the page.

~ Richard E Valdez

Tastes change, Cherie. I find the older I get the more I like to be reminded of my youth.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

War’s all either country knows, and everything seems to depend on it now.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

I do not need to understand words to know he is disappointed I am not a boy. Some things need no translation. And I know, because my body remembers without benefit of words, that men who do not welcome girl-babies will not treasure me as I grow to woman - though he call me princess just because the Guru told him to.I have come so far, I have borne so much pain and emptiness!But men have not yet changed.

~ Shauna Singh Baldwin

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

~ Kimberly Elkins

Once a man is truly dead and carried pale and cold across the Styx--once Old Bones has put an arm about his shoulders and walked him through the Gate into Darkness--might Science yet summon him back?

~ Ian Weir

I offer you your life, friend, and recommend you take it.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

Atty’s eyes rested on Darby with all the subtlety of a dog watching his food bowl being filled!

~ Tricia Murphy

In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death.

~ Upton Sinclair

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.

~ Rick Riordan

Lightening flashed again and again but above the shriek of the wind and the pounding hail they never heard the thunder.

~ Samuel Snoek-Brown