A Quote by Guy Vanderhaeghe

History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.

Guy Vanderhaeghe

Quote Topics

Felt Fiction Helps Historical Historical Fiction History How Imagine People Tells Us

Quote Author

Guy Vanderhaeghe
American - Novelist
Born: April 5, 1951

'Confederate,' in all of our minds, will be an alternative-history show. It's a science-fiction show. One of the strengths of science fiction is that it can show us how this history is still with us in a way no strictly realistic drama ever could, whether it were a historical drama or a contemporary drama.

D. B. Weiss

The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.

Michael Crichton

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.

Neil Gaiman

The Windrush era is a very important part of British history as it helps us understand how and why we became the multicultural society we are today, and also helps us understand the history of race relations in this country.

Naomie Harris

I think in a sense seeing how films have changed me and seeing how fiction moves me more than facts in many ways, and I think that I can talk for many people that fiction moves us more than real life, it certainly helps us to set forth on this a journey of a utopia, which can never be achieved.

Gael Garcia Bernal

If fiction changes things, it's usually because it's a powerful way of exploring social issues. And it helps us to understand people who are different from us.

Gillian Cross

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.

Lauren Willig

It's really important to have life strategies and part of that is sort of knowing where you want to go so you can have a map that helps you to get there. And the traditional way tells us oh we get into school and someone else advises us, helps us, but that often does not work for African Americans female and male. Because what works for the dominant culture often does not work for us.

bell hooks

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

Jamaica Kincaid

Love changes us and helps us move forward in life. It often helps us become the people we've always wanted to be and move away from the people we were. Love transforms us in the best of ways, allowing us only to look back on a memory of our former self.

Adam Wilde

The arts and humanities define who we are as a people. That is their power -- to remind us of what we each have to offer, and what we all have in common. To help us understand our history and imagine our future. To give us hope in the moments of struggle and to bring us together when nothing else will.

Michelle Obama

Whites know never tell blacks what you really think and what you really feel because you risk being seen as a racist. And the result of that is that to a degree, we as blacks live in a bubble. Nobody tells us the truth. Nobody tells us what they would do if they were in our situation. Nobody really helps us.

Shelby Steele

Do you realize that there is nothing in our genes that tells us when to die? There are genetic codes that tell us how to grow, how to breathe, and how to sleep, but NOTHING that tells us to die. So why do we? Because we literally rust and decay our bodies from the inside out with poor food and lifestyle choices.

Jillian Michaels

I think science fiction helps us think about possibilities, to speculate - it helps us look at our society from a different perspective. It lets us look at our mores, using science as the backdrop, as the game changer.

Mae Jemison

Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.