Historical Fiction Quotes - Page 2

All of them. Fated to love in vain.

Ain’t nothing too serious. Even death is a joke on the old devil, if we are living for the Lord.

A story is a wondrous invention.

Vera had also hated lipstick, Marzipan and Lutherans - excluding her husband, but not her late mother-in-law. Most of all she hated being governed by anyone or anything.

It was easy to imagine the beginning of time here, but also, perhaps, its end.

I have lived recklessly, gambled my income away at the horse races, gone whoring, have been more drunk than sober, beaten men to a pulp with my hands, have had a man’s nose cut off for insulting my father and have been indebted to villains more times than I care to say. But, I do not want to live like this anymore. I want a quiet life with a good woman who will care and love me – not for being the Duke of Monmouth, but for me, Jemmy.

About Anna Faktorovich's "Romances of George Sand": “What a read! Not lacking in action and very imaginative.

I falter in the doorway, swept with memories of my reckless behavior last time I saw him. I sipped wine from a bottle. I kissed him. And as my pulse flutters with excitement, I know I would do it again, given the chance.

All the characters in this book are fictional, but they are as real to me as the members of my own family. I had to tell their story because they could not.

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

The giant beech next door intends to shiver off every hair of its pelt.

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.

Christ's father let him die on that cross. I understand why he done it. But Christ never had no granny like me.

Fairy tales only happen in movies." -George Meliesfrom The Invention of Hugo Cabret

A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.

Sometimes time can play tricks. One moment it idles by, an hour can seem a lifetime, such as when sitting by the river at dusk watching the bats snatching insects above the limpid waters; the breaching fish causing ringed ripples and a satisfying plop. Other times, time flashes by in an immodest fashion. So it is with the start of war. First time quivers with the last strum of a wonderful peace, the note holding in the air, mysterious and haunting, filling the listener with awe. Then, with a rising crescendo the terror starts with uncouth haste; with a boom the listener is shaken from their reverie and delivered into the servitude, of an ear-shattering cacophony.

Only a fool lies brooding over his problems. When the morning comes he's tired out and his problems are the same as before.

Jewish history is never simply about the Jews, but always about their relationship with the rest of society.

I am not an atheist preacher. I am not an absolutist or chauvinist whose ways are immune to evolution. My core philosophy is that I might be wrong.

The Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte had been banished to the island of Elba. However His Imperial Majesty had some doubts wheter a quiet island life would suit him - he was, after all, accustomed to governing a large proportion of the known world.

Cease, daughter!" said the priest at last in a trembling voice. "I cannot grant absolution, no priest could...

Manuel acquired as much land as he could afford and refused to sell it to anyone, even if he was not planting anything on it. “La tierra no se acaba” (“the land does not perish”), he often said.

You are a woman born of secrets and sadness. It will either destroy your future or lead you to greatness. A handsome gentleman with eyes like the sky and hair like a raven's wing will come into your life. If you let him, he will become the hand of your vengeance. If you let him,he will shatter your heart.

How can one fight for a love that acts as the enemy?

And then I knew that despite all the pain and hard work all of us had gone through, despite the sadness and anger we felt, in the end, everything was going to be fine.tBut I did not know when the end was, or if it was even near.tBut that did not matter.tI preferred to look towards it in anticipation rather than worry about it. One new day equalled to one new adventure. And right now, I still had plenty of days left in my life. So I did not decide to sit down and plan out my life.tInstead, I decided to sit back, relax, and see where life would take me.

She raised her head and saw a squadron of fighter planes. She stretched her hand high as if she could grab hold and climb away from what she had done, from who she was.

Very different from other middle grade of YA stories I've read about slaves running during the 1800s. – Wandering Librarian

If you don't know what those old occupations were, how they were done, and how they interacted with the passersby, you're not prepared to write a historical novel. A historical figure doesn't pass through a blank countryside. That means you, the novelist, must learn by research what the whole place was like in those times. As much as you can, you must be like someone who has lived there, because you're going to be not just the storyteller but also the tour guide taking your readers through the past.

George dutifully dusted the marks from the expensive rug and retired to the kitchen to await a grave and disapproving Collins, wishing with all of his boyish heart that he had applied for the stables. Cleaning stalls had to be beneficial exercise, and surely one must become accustomed to the smells...eventually.

It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of whatever gifts she might have, however valueless they might seem... You have to have the inner strength to pursue your goal, and not care how many enemies you make along the road. It is not easy.

Why are you perpetuating a childhood you grew up despising? Pg 57

It happened so quickly. One minute I was plucking the flower, and the next I was in his chariot immersed in darkness. I struggled to wrench myself free from his grasp and run away. I twisted as far as I could, hoping to see mother chasing after me. But ahead of me, behind me, on either side of me, everywhere I looked, all I could see was darkness.

She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you."She tried to smile once more and expired.

For the space of many, many years, you were enough for me. You were my bliss, and my hallelujah.

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.

I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that.

There is not a lost piece of yourself that can't be found in a good novel.

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

Sometimes I wonder which is worse: To have to kill because it is your job, or to have no remorse for all the murderous things you have done?

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid.

It seemed ironic to her that women were considered far too meek for the morbidity of war, and yet a child could give their life in a battle they did not even understand.

Low and behold what comes of reading too many romance novels.

Two people, one city, different times; connected by a memoir. Can love exist in a city destined for decades of misery?

Peggy is a sovereign nation. She governs herself and those around her by her own laws.

Go find your own hiding spot!” I hissed. “The seat is not wide enough to hold me and that whale you call a nightgown.” Also, we were better off if whoever was coming caught one of us – and by one of us, I meant Rose.

I realize that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me.

If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man my son.

It's said truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction makes truth a friend, not a stranger.

He spent the next hours watching her sleep, taking in every detail of her face, of her body. The way the soft glow of the bedside lamp cast shadows on her cheeks. The way her chest rose and fell with each breath. And when the first light of dawn finally showed through the gap in the curtains he quietly dressed and turned off the bedside lamp, and left the room, not daring to look back.

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.

If queens did not exist, the poets would have had to invent them, so necessary as they are to a nation's glory.

I will not live to see you grow to womanhood, so I have written my story for you, my beloved grandchild, so that you can know the truth of what happened here so many years ago. I'm sure that in the course of your life you have wonderd about whispered conversations that stop when you are near. Wondered too about the knowing looks cast at you and your family. I am equally sure that your father has never found it in his heart to tell you the truth you are about to read. I beg you not to be angry with hime for withholding the truth from you. He has suffered greatly for my sins.

I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!”I had turned to call back to him, “I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.

Then the vulture swooped down and away, racing the LeTort spring to the Conodoguinet Creek from there to the Susquehanna river and from there to the sea. Same river my ancestors took to reach the places where they hunted and farmed and buried their dead.

No one ever tells you that: that there’s no method. Writing’s a lawless place.

So you do enjoy my lovemaking?"She lifted an eyebrow. "If you can't tell that, sir, you are blind and deaf and probably stupid."If he'd been a peacock, he would have been strutting about, displaying his feathers.

Once the spark of true love has been ignited, it cannot be quenched. It is there forever.

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

Great job, you just executed Ben Franklin! - Otto Ray