Historian Quote by Anonymous

“A novelist is really nothing more than an historian of a people who have no history.”

— Federico Gamboa

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

— H. L. Mencken

Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.

— F. Sionil Jose

The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of…

— John Dos Passos

What is commonly called literary history is actually a record of choices.

— Louise Bernikow

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

— Edmond de Goncourt

fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist.

— Gertrude Atherton

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

— Henry David Thoreau

Most historians are engaged in fiction.

— Peter Morgan

I'm not a biographer, I'm a novelist.

— Barry Unsworth

“Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.”

— Sara Sheridan

History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.

— Carol Tavris