Historical Fiction Quotes

I looked evil in the eye and smiled at it with such power that I felt a little dizzy.Jade Gentry (Polishing Jade)

I never wanted to safe... I wanted to be good.

How may times can you lose the one you love?

In time of war, it is not enough to say, ‘I am a citizen and I have rights.’ One must also say, ‘I am a citizen and I have obligations.

Adele, if you think that, no matter how mad you drive me, that I want to give you up, you are insane, possibly more insane than is healthy.

Prisoners!" Finan shouted, and I suspected he was shouting at me because I had so blatantly ignored my own insistence that we take men captive.

Anyone young, famous and beautiful who dies young is forever frozen in time and fascinating to all of us.

The longer I don't write, the more I hurt.

The world is going crazy, Karl. And when the world is crazy, a sane man is never okay." from The Berlin Boxing Club

No one ever tells you that: that there’s no method. Writing’s a lawless place.

Durand smiles. There is nothing behind the smile except perhaps another smile, repeating ad infinitum into the distance.'Of course, ' he says.

I turn away from the smell of death, pressing my lavender scented handkerchief as tight as I can against my nose.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become." -Steve Jobs

For the first time in years, I have vivid dreams, vivid enough to count the stars and the number of ripples in the sea.

I want to be a good man, a good writer.""Be one or the other, Ernest, not both.

Plastic flowers last for hours

No man should be asked to live with so much sadness, and with so little promise of relief.

Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.

Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book. "Just remember not to try to hard with understanding it, " Sylvia says. "Like people, they're best not to be too thoroughly understood.

Birkenau simmered in the July sun like some hideous brew, a witch's potion of blood, sweat, smoke, and excrement worthy of something the weird sisters might have cooked up in Macbeth.

That spring was the start of everything, for me. Before then, I might have been half-asleep, drifting through life.

There is not a lost piece of yourself that can't be found in a good novel.

I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one.

Madame, I believe the greatest sin against God is to be false. If one is not true to one's self, then it is impossible to be true to God. I bear you no ill will for following your heart.

A man's pride will cause him to do things you never dreamed possible. He got fired up about being right and blocked out everything else.

A man cannot change who he is. He can only hope that with age comes the wisdom to see his folly. I would like to believe I have achieved that.

It's said truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction makes truth a friend, not a stranger.

You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.

Perhaps Zeus was king, but I was Spartan, a princess twice over, and queen of Athens besides. I knew my duty. And I would rule my own fate.

Tolerance over time breeds resentment. Only through understanding, that comes from the acceptance of one another's differences, shall we find true peace.

Stay with me?” His fingers wound into my hair, and his arm tightened around me. “Always.

What to do now, Father? I am going to die like a killer, and I do not even remember killing.”“You can pray, my son. You are in the hands of God now, ” said the good priest.

What you are about to witness is a blot upon the civilization of the twentieth century."- Sing Sing Deputy Warden Spencer Miller, Addressing Antonio Pontón’s execution witnesses on January 7, 1916

On Thanksgiving Day, during our family gathering, we pray you to have mercy on Antonio Pontón …

Dear Governor Whitman, … Our father is not a simple criminal. … He was harassed by more ideas than his mind could stand. …

Pardon me for this resolution … I know that this will be a disgrace that I bring to my people, but I cannot help it. Love is the blame for it. I go in peace ... pray for me ... good-bye all.

¡Hundieron el Maine!” said Manuel to his wife Etervina, as he read the newspaper on February 16, 1898. “They sank the Maine!

Manuel acquired as much land as he could afford and refused to sell it to anyone, even if he was not planting anything on it. “La tierra no se acaba” (“the land does not perish”), he often said.

Antonio’s will was cursed. Not once, but twice.

All the characters in this book are fictional, but they are as real to me as the members of my own family. I had to tell their story because they could not.

Sheftu, ” she whispered, “it's all over.”“Nay, little one. It's just beginning. Many things are beginning.

Some things can be recovered. Some things can be restored. But some lost things, we seek forever.

It was always too late to retract, to try and retrieve what one had done.

The moment was all we truly had: a succession of moments, a triumphal march of them, to create a life beyond compare.

The porcelain doll residing in her white-pillared dollhouse was a mirage.

Julia Woodhull was many things: a lady of secrets, a patriot’s niece, and a dead man’s daughter. But one thing Julia Woodhull was most certainly not was a fool.

He who whets his steel, whets his courage.

An American Family Sampler is a book any reader will find insightful, thoroughly researched, and fun to read. Robert Frump, author, award winning journalist, business leader

It was all her doing. She had cried wolf and the wolf had come.

Six wives the King's had now.' Barak's words dragged me from my reverie. 'We can't even get one between us.