Historial Fiction Quotes

“She'd done the right thing in God's eyes. That's all that mattered.”
― Ann Shorey

“Tồi tệ hơn cả sự thất vọng, với họ, chiến tranh là một sự phản bội. Phản bội lý tưởng nghệ thuật để trở thành lính bộ binh. Phản bội bao nhiêu năm đèn sách để mang một cây súng tiểu liên. Phản bội cái công việc dài hơi là tu thân để bị rút gọn thành một con số trong một đơn vị quân đội. Và nhất là, phản bội hoạt động sáng tạo mỗi ngày sinh thêm cho thế giới những sinh linh mới, để tham gia vào một cuộc đồ sát tràn lan, một sự hủy diệt, trượt dốc vào khoảng không hun hút phía trước.”
― Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Adolf H. Zwei Leben

“In every truth there is non-truth, in every fiction there is non-fiction.”
― Thomas H. Ward, Ghost Killer

“I suppose you must feel some bitterness against the historians," Roger ventured. "All the writers who got it wrong--made him out to be a hero. I mean, you can't go anywhere in the Highlands without seeing the Bonnie Prince on toffee tins and souvenir tourist mugs."

Claire shook her head, gazing off in the distance. The evening mist was growing heavier, the bushes beginning to drip again from the tips of their leaves.

"Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they only have what the past chose to leave them behind--for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it's a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper."

There was a faint rumble in the distance. The evening passenger train from London, Roger knew. You could hear the whistle from the manse on clear nights.

"No, the fault lies with the artists," Claire went on. The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king."

"Are they all liars, then?" Roger asked. Claire shrugged. In spite of the chilly air, she had taken off the jacket to her suit; the damp molded the cotton shirt to show the fineness of collarbone and shoulder blades.

"Liars?" she asked. "Or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“I swallowed hard, eyes on the ridge ahead. "Funny thing about control," I said, voice small. "I've spent my whole life being the one who had it, because someone had to. Tom burns too hot. Ennis fights too hard. That left me - the middle one, the steady one. I don't shout, I don't cry, I don't let it break me. Somebody's got to be the smart one when everything else goes to hell.”
― Calla Tate, The Devil's Daughters