Matthew Tobin Anderson Quotes

I write novels, mostly historical ones, and I try hard to keep them accurate as to historical facts, milieu and flavor.

If you read any of my books, they tend to have a strong historical perspective.

It's still funny for me to think of myself as someone who writes historical fiction because it seems like a really fusty, musty term, and yet it clearly applies.

History is my passion. So I write what I love to read. I find that if I combine history with a strong, sensual romance, it is like a one-two punch. The reader doesn't want the history without the romance, and of course the heavier the history, the more it has to be leavened with a sensual, all-consuming love story.

Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such.

I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.

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.

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

I like the stories with the historical themes.

I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.

What 'Floating Worlds' does draw on is Holland's artistry in bringing the past to life in her historical fiction and depicting the people who inhabited that past.

I'm such a history-nerd that, with time for research, I could probably enjoy writing in just about any time period.

I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.

If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.

When one is the type of writer who cares about the meaning of the historically specific setting, the history itself is not something that I would call backdrop. It's not window dressing for a timeless relationship about love and betrayal. For me, the setting and the specific history are active co-agents with me in trying to form the novel.

I like going back in time and writing historical fantasy. I use some real historical characters as a background to give depth to the fantasy. And I throw my fictional characters into the midst of this, and, so far, it has turned out interesting.

I love being educated by historical novels.

Writers of historical fiction are often faced with a problem: if they include real-life people, how do they ensure that their make-believe world isn't dwarfed by truth? The question loomed large as I began reading 'The Black Tower', Louis Bayard's third foray into historical fiction and fifth novel overall.

I've always been drawn to writing historical characters. The best stories are the ones you find in history.

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

I'm something of a history buff. It's deliberate that a lot of my films have been period pieces.

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.

I like writing historical fiction.

I just write the sort of book that I would enjoy reading myself, a book that is both scholarly and recreates the experience of people at that time.

Although this is a fictitious story the history is real. You don't want to re-write history but you certainly want to portray events and characters as realistically as you can.