Books Quote by James A. Michener

We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a…

— Saul David

History - the non-fiction version - must inform the fiction to make it truthful; too much of it and your genres are colliding.

— Jon Weisman

When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

— Kurt Busiek

I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of…

— Peter Carey

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

— Louise Bernikow

“Historical fiction isn't history in the conventional sense and shouldn't be judged as such. The best historical novels are loyal to history, but it…

— Daniel Aaron

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

History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to…

— Amy Waldman

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

— Philippa Gregory

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at…

— Edward Rutherfurd

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.

— Anonymous

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

— Anonymous