Historical Fiction Quotes

The lines in the corners of her eyes spoke of years of wisdom, as a tree with the number of rings increasing with each passing year. She was a small frame of a woman with piercing eyes that suggested that they knew you, understood you even.

~ F.c. Malby

I said to my mother, Henry VII is interesting. No he's not, my mother said.

~ Hilary Mantel

I studied how to use the clothes washer. The handy instructions on the lid helped, so did the box of suds. It instructed me to separate the whites from the coloreds. Laundry will be the last American institution to desegregate.

~ Huston Piner

It wasn't my choice to write this story...it was my responsibility.

~ Rhonda Fink-Whitman

This building fool could only be Bess of Hardwicke, a woman whose name is seldom seen in print without the word “redoubtable” in front of it. I wondered if anyone ever called her redoubtable to her face. I redoubted it.

~ Joann Spears

Don't ever let anyone tell you that things can't be changed, that things can't be done. The can and they will, if we are united in what we believe.

~ F.c. Malby

The sublime beauty was almost hidden withing the castle walls. She believed that the treasured things in life were often hard to find - a pearl in an oyster shell, a kind word in the heat of the moment.

~ F.c. Malby

As people's hopes soared, Jana felt a tinge of fear.

~ F.c. Malby

He nodded, looking across the room at the sea of photographers and journalists. The microphones spread around him like birds waiting to be fed.

~ F.c. Malby

Mr Martinek turned back to Jana. 'Thirty-eight per cent alcohol, sixty-two per cent fire - all the way from Karlovy Vary.

~ F.c. Malby

As the sun lowered into the city's skyline, casting an orange glow over the islands, Jana could feel people's hopes rising.

~ F.c. Malby

9 November 1989. A day nobody would forget. She had heard rumours about the wall.

~ F.c. Malby

I don't know, Benes. I'm not sure I've ever really understood women for that kind of commitment.' He flipped his beer mat up int the air with his index finger and caught it in his hand.

~ F.c. Malby

To Jana's mind everybody seemed happy to see BAbichka and resisted returning her, like a misplaced package sent to the wrong address. It was as if the recipient opened it up, knowing it should be returned, but wondering who long they could legitimately keep it before being changed with theft.

~ F.c. Malby

The others moved in like a wake of vultures, ready to devour their prey. she had seen it on television once. 'Scavengers,' Tatinek called them. They swoop in and feed off the carcasses of animals that are too weak to escape - lots of them on battlefields. This looked the same, only the victim wasn't there, just his writing, his typewriter, and bits of dark paper.

~ F.c. Malby

One word was the method by which the state collected their information. They could reel in the informants and spread them out like tentacles, ready to sting in any direction.

~ F.c. Malby

I am a survivor. But I am not unique of the people that survived the great late war. We all have our stories to tell. But for most of us the hardened corners have soften with the passage of time.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

All good things originate with the Creator God, he'd been taught, and the Song of Life was no exception.

~ Sandi Layne

You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.

~ Hilary Mantel

One night when the moon was full, I explained to you about how the moon controls the tides, and you said I was like the moon and you were the sea, always following me about. And I said nothing, because I knew it was truly the other way around.

~ Sarah Bower

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist.(Voltaire)

~ Elizabeth Kales

After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.

~ Michelle Moran

Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win, and if not to win, then to die?

~ Hilary Mantel

How many men can say, as I must, 'I am a man whose only friend is the King of England'? I have everything, you would think. And yet take Henry away, and I have nothing.

~ Hilary Mantel

Messages continued to arrive from the Earl of Warwick, urging Londoners to hold firm for King Harry. Marguerite d'Anjou and her son were expected to land at any time, while from St Albans, Edward sent word that Harry of Lancaster was to be considered a prisoner of state. At that, John Stockton, the Mayor of London, contracted a diplomatic virus and took to his bed.

~ Sharon Kay Penman

You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's leg sliced clean off. They saw a woman gasp her last. They saw the goods looted, thieves stealing from the back-end while the carter was crushed at the front. They heard a man roar out his last confession, while another whispered his last will and testament. And if all the people who say they were there had really been there, then the dregs of London would have drained to the one spot, the gaols emptied of thieves, the beds empty of whores, and all the lawyers standing on the shoulders of the butchers to get a better look.

~ Hilary Mantel

... every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.

~ Hilary Mantel

Go back to bed, Cowan. I want no promises from you.

~ Sandi Layne

No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he would call out 'Glory be' and set her up in a house and visit her every day, until the novelty wore off. Nothing is forbidden to George, you see. He'd go to it with a terrier bitch if she wagged her tail at him and said bow-wow.'For once he is struck silent. He knows he will never get it out of his mind, the picture of George in a hairy grapple with a little ratting dog.

~ Hilary Mantel

... those sectaries in Europe who are always expecting the end of the world, but who hope that, after the earth has been consumed by fire, they will be seated in glory: grilled a little, crisp at the edges and blackened in parts, but still, thanks be to God, alive for eternity, and seated at his right hand.

~ Hilary Mantel

Riding a bull must be a bit like flying an ultralight. You get up there and have an exhilarating ride, but then you still have to get down.

~ Susan Spence

Where do you go when you die twice-lest a thousand deaths?

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

The urge to draw near to the female silhouette resided deep in the ancient center of a man...

~ Kelly O'connor Mcnees

If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels.

~ Hilary Mantel

Our house has its back to the sea,' writes Hester in her journal. 'Below us, the ocean spreads to the sky, twitching wide and blue and hungry. One would think it to be infinite. But we, of course, know better.

~ Tanya Moir

He draws a line under his conclusions. Says, 'Gregory, what should I do about the great worm?' 'Send a commission against it, sir,' the boy says. 'It must be put down.' He gives his son a long look. 'You do know it's Arthur Cobbler's tales?' Gregory gives him a long look back. 'Yes, I do know.' He sounds regretful. 'But it makes people so happy when I believe them.

~ Hilary Mantel

But you see, Crumb, it is hard to give up what you have worked at since you were a boy. There were some Italian visitors once, they were cheering us on, Brandon and myself, and they thought that Achilles and Hector had come back to life. So they said.'But which is which? One dragged through the dust by the other ...The king says, 'You turn your boy out beautifully. No nobleman could do more.''I don't want him to be Achilles,' he says, 'I only want him not to be flattened.

~ Hilary Mantel

It is dark and there are bad creatures in these woods.Yes, there are...

~ Katlyn Charlesworth

I knew why earlier generations once believed that the sun circled the earth. Because, in our limited imaginations, that is how we lived our lives. -Mrs. Tuesday's Departure

~ Suzanne Anderson

The end is but a new beginning for the eternal Ba.

~ Inge H. Borg