Historical Fiction Quotes

Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you!

Elsa's mother no longer spoke to her of men and love, but of duty and fate and accepting one’s burden. As far as Elsa could tell, if love really was the inherited female domain, then women were saddled with the biggest burden of all. It was pressing down upon them, the way the sea pressed down upon the creatures of the deep.

The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.

Both slaves had been oiled until their flesh shined like polished ebony, outlining every detail of their muscles.

I'd rather make a good run than a bad stand.

Kevin looks at me and I know he isn’t seeing the little girl I use to be, all pigtails and gangly limbs. He isn’t seeing my mother’s daughter or even my mother anymore. As his eyes linger over me, stopping here and there in the most uncomfortable places, I know he isn’t really even seeing me as I am. The bloodshot eyes staring out of the alcohol-flushed face are seeing a girl, nearly of age, who owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.--Rocky Evans

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

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.

The only reason I'd lift my skirt is to pull a pistol and plug you in the head.

They do not call him the terror of husbands and lovers for no reason...

Sheftu,” she whispered, “it's all over.”“Nay, little one. It's just beginning. Many things are beginning.

The rain landed on my skin with a barely audible patter and changed the tempo of its repetitive dance, letting the wind change its course and angle. The cold soon seeped through my dress and into my bones. An iris from my garland fell in my lap.

He watched the newly arrived commuters as they stepped into the carriage, pushed their way down the tube, the odours from their damp clothes mingling, giving off varying degrees of mustiness: London grime, or smoke from airless offices. A woman wearing a blue swing coat glanced along the carriage, casting around for an empty seat. Her pale skin, the searching green eyes, reminded him of Emma. Briefly, he felt his breath catch; he stood, clambered back over his neighbour and indicated for her to take his seat. And so his mind stayed with Emma when he knew he should be working out a strategy for telling Dorothy of his news. But Emma was never far away; like the glitter balls in dance halls, she would slowly rotate in his memory, different facets reappearing, as the hues changed in her auburn hair.

Readers will be swept up by the drama and fast pace of this powerful debut novel.” Reading Today Online, International Reading Association

We may be finished with the past but the past is not finished with us.

Yet, the quest for knowledge will overcome us and we must know. And, at last, we must see where the road ends, even if it be the cliff.

What you are about to witness is a blot upon the civilization of the twentieth century."- Sing Sing Deputy Warden Spencer Miller, Addressing Antonio Pontón’s execution witnesses on January 7, 1916

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.

Before I disappear behind the door, I stop and turn around to look at him.

‎"He smiled at me and I felt the tenderness only a daughter could feel.

I turn away from the smell of death, pressing my lavender scented handkerchief as tight as I can against my nose.

Stay with me?” His fingers wound into my hair, and his arm tightened around me. “Always.

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.

Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called ‘heightened interrogation’. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.

Sunlight streamed in a steady flow, casting flecks of gold onto the floor, bathing my skin. I inhaled deeply. Already, the air inside my bedroom had been perfumed with nature. A breeze whispered softly and breathed carefully onto my skin.

Margaret looked at the ring on her finger. "Gran gave me this before we boarded the ship. It's the most special thing in the world to me. I'll never take it off, Hanna. No matter how hungry I am.

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognise her, you will think she is someone you know.

It is easier to start a war than to end it.

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

Lady's mouth tasted like blood and iron all the time now. It tasted like defeat.

The world is going crazy, Karl. And when the world is crazy, a sane man is never okay." from The Berlin Boxing Club

He could inspire ballads. He could inspire wars.

THE FIGHTING IN THE PEACH ORCHARD AT GETTYSBURGPROLOGUE"The same young men who crowded each other as they faced the recruiters' tables now crowded each other as they died.

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

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

Eliza had never seen Alex quite so happy and relaxed. She shook her head and laughed at the incongruity of it all: Imagine General Washington's famous aide-de-camp taking the time to stop and admire the birds."One day, Alex, when you tire of being a soldier, we will spend all of our days just like this, watching birds and taking in the sun, surrounded by children of our own. You'd like that, wouldn't you, my love?""Eliza, you and the Pastures have already taken a perfectly fine soldier and turned him into a lovesick pup. And at this moment, on this very day, there's nothing and nowhere I'd rather be.

Why else do we write and write except to move our readers?

No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …- Fifth Amendment, United States Constitution

Through enjoyment we endure.

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

Now, at last, she understood her great attraction to him. Here was the companion of her spirit. Here, indeed, was love.

My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.

What Mrs. Schuyler is saying," General Schuyler added, "is that it is the Schuylers who would be honored by a union woth so brilliant and noble a personage as Colonel Hamilton.

Enjoy the ride!

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.

The human heartIs unknowable.But in my birthplaceThe flowers still smellThe same as always.

If I had two breaths left in me, the first one I would use to tell you I miss you, and the second that I love you.

Now the day has ended, its brief excitements already an imperfect memory.

A gripping historical novel . . . heart-stopping, heart-racing and eventually heart-easing.–Library Voice

How may times can you lose the one you love?

Leave the gun, take the cannoli--Clemenza to Rocco in the Godfather (1972)

Soeur Seraphina gently removed my lace fontanges. It was named for the King’s mistress Angelique de Fontanges, who had lost her hat while hunting one day and had hastily tied up her curls with her garter. The King had admired the effect, and the next day all the court ladies had appeared with their curls tied back with lace

But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.

I cannot tell you how exciting it is when you first see your book in paperback, then when the good reviews roll in it is just the red bow on the present under the tree.

Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs... Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance?

Did I behave myself tonight, Ross?’ she asked. ‘Did I behave as Mrs Poldark should behave?’‘You misbehaved monstrously,’ he said, ‘and were a triumph.

The typewriter is indeed my passport into a world otherwise barred to me and my kind.

Conformity is deformity

Positive thoughts (expectations) can change perspective, transform behaviors, and attract good fortune.

Septimus grinned. "It's not coins I seek. I seek the power of Hercules.