Composer Quote by Peter Ackroyd

If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events,…

— Diana Gabaldon

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

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to…

— Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

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

— F. Sionil Jose

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

— Federico Gamboa

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

“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

We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous. They are very good at imagining…

— David Starkey

A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even…

— Thornton Wilder

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

— Joseph Boyden

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

— Joseph Conrad

Historical fiction is not only a respectable literary form; it is a standing reminder of the fact that history is about human beings.

— Helen Cam