History Quote by Halldor Laxness

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

— F. Sionil Jose

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth – not a different truth:…

— Shelby Foote

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

— Federico Gamboa

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

— Peter Morgan

If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a…

— Matthew Arnold

The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is…

— Henry Adams

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

— Joseph Conrad

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles…

— Augustine Birrell

“Historical fiction is a hybrid, a blending of reported reality, reasonable speculation, psychological truth, and the author’s imagination.”

— Philippa Gregory

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

— Edmond de Goncourt

I think poets tell better history than historians. Historians lie all the time but the poets can get to truth of it.

— John Cusack

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

— Tim O'Brien