Pictures that will live on for years, like ‘The Birth of a Nation’ and ‘Gone With the Wind,’ had great historical events in the background.
I like writing historical fiction.
The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that ‘Lincoln’ is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we’ve actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln’s presidency that’s somewhat original.
I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.
I have known Evo Morales for many years, since the days of the union movement. From a historical and sociological standpoint, the election of Evo Morales is extraordinary, with great prospects and potential for the Bolivian people.
We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life.
When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.
The Oberlin/Cleveland area is where the underground railroad came out, so it’s an interesting historical place. I love Ohio and really loved Oberlin.
I’ve been typed as historical fiction, historical women’s fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance – all for the same book.
We are journeying externally from country to country. We are traveling in historical time, from the present to the distant past. We are traveling inwardly as well, through the music of meditation.
Today, in American imperialism, the commodity has reached its most grandiose historical manifestation.
I knew from an online search that the Wisconsin State Historical Society, on the vast University of Wisconsin campus, held the papers of Sigrid Schultz, a spunky correspondent for the ‘Chicago Tribune’ who became one of Martha Dodd’s friends in Berlin.
The story of Noah is self-contradictory, uncorroborated by independent historical evidence, and is generally at odds with everything we know about our planet’s geology, biology, and species diversity.
Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction.
I believe it has been said that one copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
I think when people talk about race relations in America, they talk about African-American and white people. Asians are not often brought into the conversation. But there’s a historical legacy of issues between them. It’s hard to be like, ‘What about us?’ But we are a little underrepresented.
My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.
In the long march of history, at least two poles of attraction and antagonism have been the norm in world politics. Rarely has only one nation carried the burden of leadership. The unipolar world of the 21st century, dominated for the past two decades by the United States, is a historical anomaly.
Me at parties: ‘Like, do you want to know the historical context of the prophet Jeremiah?’
Everything in ‘The Tudors’ is initially based on my historical research, and the fact is that the most unlikely scenes were the ones which were probably most based on reality. I prefer to be as real as possible, and there is so much of that story that you just can’t make up.
Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that’s the point to step back and fill in the details of their world.
After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.
I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.
Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.
Fifty years ago, historians advised politicians and policy-makers. They helped chart the future of nations by helping leaders learn from past mistakes in history. But then something changed, and we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic.
When I was in high school, I looked for the black presence in a British historical tradition – before too much slavery and empire – that would not cost me my self-respect.
We may feel the pain of falling back from a level of affluence to which we have grown accustomed, but most people in developed countries are still, by historical standards, extraordinarily well off.
For some people, the definition of who is and who isn’t an American defies logic, historical accuracy, common sense, decency, good manners, the milk of human kindness, enjoyment in the good things in life, and love of good food.
It’s good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it’s very pleasing after writing something like ‘Atonement’ or ‘On Chesil Beach,’ which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.
Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.
The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.
Every hope of successive generations of scholars that order might be constructed from the chaotic mess of medical nomenclature has been frustrated. Even diseases recognized in the same historical period have been given names based on characteristics that have no relation to one another, and thus no common criteria.
I love historical references.
I love historical movies. I want to make a violent medieval epic.
I’m a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.
Even when God chose Israel, he did not create the people of Israel as he created its human members, as natural beings. Instead, God formed the people of Israel from individual human beings already living in the natural world, calling them into a new historical identity.
It is true that of all the states in India, Nagaland has a unique history. We are sensitive to this historical fact. But this uniqueness has in no way diminished the spirit of patriotism among the Naga people.
‘Boardwalk’ begins literally on the first day of Prohibition, which I think was a wonderful way to start – to have the story kind of come out of this massive historical phenomenon. And the more I researched the ’20s, the more I discovered just how interesting it was.
Paris is different from LA in regards to its historical architecture. I think that’s what gives Paris it’s charm and beauty.
What I found was when I started my first study, and then in subsequent studies, is here you have people under some kind of duress, or I chose to study them because they represented some kind of historical event, as it impacted on them or as they helped to create it.
I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.
One thing I like about historical fiction is that I’m not constantly focusing on me, or people like me; you’re obliged to concentrate on lives that are completely other than your own.
The idea of taking what people call the ‘entertainment culture’ as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.
I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they’re writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.
Jewish persecution is a historical memory of the present generation and people fear it in the present day, and that’s why those references are so much more powerful. I just understand that better now.
Each generation of adolescents has at least two historical events that color its responses to whatever happens next.
Redistributing tokens is a balancing act. In most cases, forks probably want to keep ownership for users constant so users have at least the same incentives to use the new fork as the historical one.
Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.
Why do we always have to see black people in hindsight? Why are the Hollywood movies always historical? What about the contemporary image of black people?
I write novels, mostly historical ones, and I try hard to keep them accurate as to historical facts, milieu and flavor.
Southern Republicans are guided by the Bible. Western Republicans read the Constitution. Seen in historical terms, it’s the difference between a movement descended from George Wallace and one that harks back to Barry Goldwater.
