Affair Quote by Simon Schama

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies…

— Colm Toibin

“History, in the end, is only another kind of story, and stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and…

— Paul Murray

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

— F. Sionil Jose

For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from…

— Miguel de Cervantes

“Writers don't make peace with their past..... They preserve the crumbs and weave stories around them”

— Gaurav Sharma

“since historians must and ought to be exact, truthful, and absolutely free of passions, for neither interest, fear, rancor, nor affection should make them…

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Rooting arguments in evidence and respecting scholarly norms, historians must craft stories that shape the future as well as the past.”

— Michael J. Lansing

“What I've learned writing these stories is that history only looks heavy and solid. In fact, it won't ever stay still.”

— Emily Geminder

“What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the…

— Ruta Sepetys

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

— Joseph Boyden

Memoirs are the backstairs of history.

— George Meredith

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

— Edmond de Goncourt