Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.
Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.
Archaeology can be overlooked as a discipline, I think, but it’s incredibly important to have this other way of approaching the past – not just through historical documents, but through actual physical remains – objects, buildings and the layout of our towns.
Why would you create a movie for black people if you don’t understand the history and perspective of the people you are doing it for? You need historical perspective to make sound decisions.
I suppose it’s fair to say that I am interested in the invention of self or selves. We’re all born into certain circumstances with particular physical traits, unique developmental experiences, geographical and historical contexts.
I don’t think nostalgia is a healthy modality. But nostalgia and a sense of history are not the same thing. Nostalgia is a dysfunction of the historical impulse, or a corruption of the historical impulse.
The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of ‘the history play.’ There can be no doubt that Shakespeare’s presentations of ‘Henry V’ and ‘Richard III’ have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.
Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality.
Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.
A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.
Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history.
Large-scale philanthropy, based in the private – not the public – sector, is a relatively recent historical development.
Like so many others, I came to romance during the golden age of it – Judith McNaught, Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey and Jude Deveraux were at the height of their historical domination. Without those women, I wouldn’t be a romance novelist.
I actually think actors both are drawn to playing real-life historical people and are terrified.
There are a lot of Chinese comics, but the Chinese comics tend to be more historical and conservative. Japanese culture, just the comics are amazing. They’re like films: very few words; they move so much in these books with hundreds of pages.
My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.
There are a whole lot of historical factors that have played a part in our being where we are today, and I think that to even to begin to understand our contemporary issues and contemporary problems, you have to understand a little bit about that history.
Today, we are fortunate that the historical novel has reached such extraordinary heights of technical mastery. The ability of society to connect with the past holds out the greatest hope for it being able to embrace the future.
My first three manuscripts were epic fantasy – like high fantasy – and then the fourth one was a historical fantasy about Mozart as a child. I still have a soft spot for that one!
The novel and the film of ‘The Color Purple’ are both works of the imagination that make claim to historical truth.
I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.
I’m fascinated by failure, and I’m fascinated by finality. Shakespeare’s historical plays are more universal than his comedies because they relate to the finality of life. Without finality, life would not be beautiful.
The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.
We repeat today that we are with the establishment of a Palestinian state on any liberated part of Palestinian land that is agreed upon by the Palestinian people, without recognizing Israel or conceding any inch of historical Palestine.
After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.
Given the historical power differential between blacks and whites, blacks are required to be attentive to the way their white counterparts see themselves in relation to people of color if they want to survive and even thrive.
To be a writer was always my greatest aim. I remember writing a play about Guy Fawkes when I was 10. I suppose it’s significant, at least to me, that my first work should be about a historical figure.
Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can’t identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn’t yet historical.
There is a great silver lining to the 45th presidency, which is, it’s hard to swallow that he is existing, which gives us the silver lining, which is a great uncovering of the historical disenfranchisement and marginalization of so many people in this country for so long.
Modern Armenia survived only because it was the single province controlled, and protected, by the Russian Empire. The rest of the territory within its historical borders is almost wholly devoid of ethnic Armenians.
One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.
I wander around, get the lay of the land and try to imagine what kind of people would have lived there in that historical period. What would they eat? What kind of clothing would they wear? How did they shelter themselves? How did they get around?
Ellis Peters’s historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.
I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves ‘Downton Abbey’ will realize they were actually watching a historical romance novel.
My goal is to produce as rich and historical an experience for the reader as I possibly can, to the point where when somebody finishes reading the book, he or she emerges from it with a sense of having lived in the past.
Some critics said, ‘Hey, why are you writing historical novels?’ I say they’re not historical, they’re contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn’t just what you can see now.
That one woman is capable of loving another is an historical truth; but never yet lived one who could not listen to her own praises at the expense of her adored friend.
I have achieved lots of things throughout my career that are very, very good, but if they rewarded me with a Ballon d’Or, that would be historical.
Most people’s historical perspective begins with the day of their birth.
We should perceive that man’s period of historical existence, a period so short that his physical constitution has not been altered in the slightest degree, is insufficient to allow of any considerable mental change.
Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.
Spain is an important historical ally of the United States, and if confirmed, I will add to our more than 200 years of diplomatic history to further our shared interests.
I think a lot of times, the historical piece is often a way to comment on the present.
The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.
I like historical things; I like researching things.
When I was working on a Victorian-era novel, to get in the mood, I read several historical novels set in approximately the same period and place, and really enjoyed the detective novels of John Dickson Carr.
A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.
For me, writing a historical novel was really hard. I love history as a subject and majored in it in college. I think, in a way, my training made it worse for me because I knew how important it was to focus on document-based analysis, and I really didn’t want to get stuff wrong.
Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.
I go into any movie that’s historical fiction thinking, ‘OK, I’m here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it’s a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won’t even be bothered by the opinions. I’ll make my own mind up.’
