Hannah Kent Quotes

The initial research will be very indiscriminate. I do a lot of reading, buy a stack of books and read and digest them, and then I start doing phone interviews and archival research and then the travelling.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on.

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events.

With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that.

I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.

I am a historian. I do a lot of research, and I try to get it right.

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.

The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to let them speak for themselves.

I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly.

One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.

I don't read many popular histories like the ones I write. The building blocks for my research are scholarly monographs, and the inspiration for my storytelling style are folks like Chekhov.

To reconstruct stories and scenes, nonfiction writers must conduct vigorous and responsible research. In fact, narrative requires more research than traditional reportage, for writers cannot simply tell what they learn and know; rather, they must show it.

It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.

History written today is much more accurate than history written in the 18th century.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?' Anything in my books that is in quotes comes from some kind of living historical document: a letter, a memoir, a court transcript, a newspaper interview.

I do not start with a full knowledge of the facts; the whole attraction of writing history is to educate myself: it is an exploration into the unknown - 'a journey without maps,' to borrow Graham Greene's phrase.

You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house.

Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject.

With my research, I really need absolute confirmation of what actually happened, direct physical connections to the past.

We need to read history from the source.

As historians, we spend days in archives, gazing at account books. We train would-be historians in the arts of deciphering letters and documents, early Latin, scribal handwriting, medieval French.

I use all kinds of resources for researching my novels. I'm not shy about calling up experts and asking questions, or emailing, or buying textbooks and references. The Internet is always a brilliant way to find instant facts, but it's not a great way to really understand your subjects in depth without a lot of work.