Books Quote by Doris Lessing

Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do.

— Alix Kates Shulman

Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.

— Laila Lalami

Fiction is ideally suited to re-creating the important emotional aspects of history.

— Alix Kates Shulman

I think that novels are one of the best means that we have to communicate both with the past and with the future.

— Emily Barton

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

— Jane Smiley

Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient.

— Ian Mcewan

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core,…

— Jami Attenberg

“Novels should reflect reality to some extent, otherwise they risk being sentimental.”

— Marc Levy

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

— Joyce Cary

It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.

— Ned Beauman

Novels can fill in the spaces about what that emotional resonance is.

— Quiara Alegria Hudes

Novels can be a snapshot of a moment in time, or several moments in time, and as a reader, that's what I really like,…

— Meg Wolitzer