Irving Stone Quotes

One of the great lessons I learned about historical fiction from writing 'Loving Frank' is that you don't try to disguise what people did; my approach was to try to understand the characters and why they did what they did.

I once interviewed David Herbert Donald, the Lincoln historian, and we talked about how one deals with the secondary sources and the previous biographies. He said something which kept coming back to me as I worked on Cleopatra, which was: 'There's no further new material; there are only new questions.'

The late Tom Wicker's biography of Nixon, called 'One of Us,' is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn't expected to feel.

I have always been averse to theorizing about the art or craft of biography. Like Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, who offers the cautionary analogy of the biographical centipede unsure of her next step because of too much cerebration, I have made it my practice to let the facts find the theory.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

I have a hard time with abstractions. I always go to the personal.

I suppose one of the things that interest me about acting is unpicking what makes people tick and why they do what they do and what it means to be human.

Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

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.

I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.

You can’t read history backward.

Logic, it is true, must yield to history.

[John F.] Kennedy was a great listener. As he listened his eyes got larger, and he looked at you, and you knew you had been looked at and listened to.

In analyzing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

The historian must walk a fine line between scientific detachment and humanistic engagement.

I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.

I think that I identify with my role in pretty much everything I have tried to do. I try to find something that I can understand about each character's behavior.

I do figure every angle of a guy I'm acting - but not consciously 'til afterward.

When I prepare for a role, I try to get inside the character's head and understand him.

You can't understand a character intellectually, you have to become one with its emotional core.

As an actor, you have to find reasons why your character made her decisions, and you have to empathise with her.

I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.

Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.