A Quote by Nicholas Meyer

With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.

Nicholas Meyer

Quote Topics

Accord Been Being Characters Dates Dramatic Events Go Historical History Know Latitude Least Liberties License Movie Movies Novel People Poetic Poetic License Same Scott Seem Should Since Some Taken Understand Understanding

Quote Author

Nicholas Meyer
American - Writer
Born: December 24, 1945

When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history.

Charlotte Mary Yonge

I wrote an article not so long ago that was published in the Los Angeles Times, and I think I titled it "Movies vs. History." But I think they had another title for it. I got sort of sick and tired of seeing movies that got picked apart by people because they had taken dramatic or poetic license and I said "These people don't understand the distinctions."

Nicholas Meyer

If we're ignorant of the historical sacrifices that made our liberties possible, we will be less likely to make the sacrifices again so that those liberties are preserved for future generations. And, if we're ignorant, we won't even know when government infringes on our liberties. Moreover, we'll happily cast our votes for those who'd destroy our liberties.

Walter E. Williams

I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

Augusten Burroughs

Everybody's been decrying the death of movie theaters for decades and, you know, people are still going to the movies in droves. It's gone down, but it hasn't gone down that much. I think the biggest change has been the emergence of cable and streaming on television. That has really had a dramatic effect, and I think it's a positive one. I think there's really good work going on there, and as movies stratify to being these gigantic tentpole movies, and small movies, I think it gives another outlet for character-driven material.

Denise Di Novi

It's just a fact of life that I don't think I've ever been taken particularly seriously in movies by movie makers. I don't know why.

Lauren Bacall

The novel since its origins has been the privatization of history... the history of private life ... and in that sense every novel is an historical novel.

Jose Emilio Pacheco

Like, I took no poetic license with 'Schindler's List' because that was historical, factual documents.

Steven Spielberg

My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

George Santayana

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

I think it's important to understand Shari'a to be rooted in history - what we know about the history and what we don't know about the history. So then, if people want to argue, at least they're arguing from the same point and we know what we know, and we know what we don't know.

Sadakat Kadri

The ratio of male to female characters in movies has been exactly the same since 1946. So if you've ever had people say, you know, "It's better now, it's all changed, it's all different," it's not, it hasn't. Not yet.

Geena Davis

We should be licensing everybody with a gun. I have to have a license for my dog. I have to have a license for my car. If you're going to do my hair later you have to have a license... We don't require a license to own a firearm?

Michael Moore

We should be licensing everybody with a gun. I have to have a license for my dog. I have to have a license for my car. If you’re going to do my hair later you have to have a license ... We don’t require a license to own a firearm?

Michael Moore

I love these kind of movies as a kind of cinema-going geek myself. Those characters, you want to be like those characters when you go to the movies. You know, when you see a movie with a guy who's really cool and the killing's slick and easy. I don't know. There's something intoxicating about it.