Rick Wakeman Quotes

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 started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

I love general history. That's all I read really. I don't read novels, I read history. I love it. I live in an area that's really rich in Civil War history. I live in Kentucky on a farm. A lot of revolution, a lot of military history I love.

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

As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

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

I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off.

So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.'

I don't normally do pure historical work.

When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).

Anyone can play Henry VIII. I mean, even Robert Shaw... has played it.

I've done quite a few things based on real events or real people, and I think that's always really interesting that you can read about them or, if you're lucky, you can meet them.

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

Usually, historical revelations come from days of legwork, ploughing through piles of letters and papers in archives or even private homes, looking for the telling phrase or letter that someone else has missed.

I am fascinated by Tudor times.

I studied archaeology.

I was taught that if you're going to study something, you must understand it deeply and be familiar with primary sources. But if you write a history of the whole world, you can't do this. That's the trade-off.

I'm a history buff, so I've been reading lots of books on Irish and American history.

To properly investigate a subject, we must investigate a subject's stuff.

I enjoy the act of research. I'm researching as a means to an end, but I literally just enjoy reading about how people lived in the past and understanding it better.

I'm fascinated by delving into the historical context of what life was like in the past.

I've always been fascinated by history.

I'm not a Lincoln expert, rather a biographer who has had the pleasure of reading much of what has been written about him from his lifetime to this year of his bicentennial. Some advice: Don't try that unless you have at least five years available.

I only read the left-hand pages, so I finish books twice as fast.