Colossal Quote by Peter Carey

The only significance of analyzing the past is that it does give us some key to the future.

— John F. Kennedy

The biggest invention of modern time is the book. The book is a digital medium; book text is written in a different form and…

— Sebastian Thrun

I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on…

— John Lewis Gaddis

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

I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable…

— Brian Eno

To discover the various use of things is the work of history.

— Karl Marx

Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it, the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we…

— James Salter

Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted,…

— Sara Sheridan

I'm not particularly inventive. If you left me in а room and told me to write a novel, I wouldn't be able to do…

— Elizabeth Gilbert

We invent the past and remember the future.

— Isak Dinesen

The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out…

— Toni Morrison

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

— Frederick Douglass