Ellen Terry Quotes

Coroner's inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn't been to the sea-shore in ten years.

Autopsies give us the facts but not the truth.

Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Every show you do, you have to do research, and I love to dig into things. I learned about World War II by doing 'Anne Frank.'

Obviously, the most memorable has a lot to do with the time spent on the matter, and the Westerfield and Peterson cases are up at the top of the list.

At first I was queasy; I'll never forget the sound of the scalpel cutting a body open. But it was so cool trying to work out how these people died.

There are even more statues of Robert Burns than of any other figure in world literature. Indeed if we discount figures of religion, then only Christopher Columbus has more statues than he worldwide.

It's very questionable, and we will pursue every factor, every element, every second of the timeline, of the final hours of Maurice's life. We will pursue that relentlessly. That will be our quest from now on.

After hearing the evidence, I will record a verdict of natural causes.

One thing that always frustrated me was that, while Benjamin Franklin's was the best-known face of the eighteenth century, no one ever took his sister's likeness.

You don't have to know people personally for them to be role models. Some of my most important role models were historical or literary figures that I only read about - never actually met.

Some of the most learned of the people were chosen to make known the lives of those lords in songs.

The panel itself was unable to examine the brain because it is among certain autopsy materials which are unaccounted for.

Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and Bea Arthur and Gertrude Stein and Gore Vidal.

You can't cast Hittites as Trojans; I'd love to do it, but sadly, there are none available!

In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I think she was, but I hope, too, that readers will enjoy the people she surrounded herself with.

For 'The Grace of Kings,' I read Han Dynasty historical records in Classical Chinese, which allowed me to get a sense of the complexity of the politics and the 'surprisingly modern' reactions of the historical figures to recurrent problems of state administration.

One of the great pleasures in writing 'The Dream Lover' was learning about some of the real people who populated George Sand's life. What a cast of characters! And what a pleasure to recreate them upon the page!

Why can't I make up my own characters and paint the people I want to see in the world? I'm depicting the many people who existed in history but whose presence was never documented.

In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.

If you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!

When I see a large group of people, I wonder how many of them will eventually require autopsies.

One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.

You can't really dust for vomit.