A Quote by Helen Cam

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

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About Beings Fact Fiction Form Historical Historical Fiction History Human Human Being Human Beings Literary Only Reminder Respectable Standing

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Helen Cam
August 22, 1885 - February 9, 1968

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Elie Wiesel

'War and Peace' holds a strange place in literary history, participating in the crowning of realism as a substantial and serious literary mode in America, even as the novel also contributed to the argument that historical fiction could be by nature dangerous, illegitimate, and inaccurate.

Alexander Chee

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.

Chang-Rae Lee

History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.

Edward M. Lerner

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

The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.

Tony Kushner

We're growing up with a very illiterate bunch of children who have somehow been taught that film is fact when, in fact, it's invention. Hopefully, an historical film will inspire people to go and read about the history but in the end it is a work of fiction and selection. As for the armour itself, no it wasn't particularly comfortable.

Cate Blanchett

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings.

Donna J. Haraway

Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)

Charles Stross

People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.

Hilary Mantel

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

Edward Rutherfurd

There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.

Dennis Prager

Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.

Pamela Sargent

Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation.

George R. R. Martin

In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.

Nathaniel Dorsky

A Quote by Helen Cam

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