Gary Jennings Quotes

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.

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

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 like the stories with the historical themes.

I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time.

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.

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

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 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.

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

In writing my historical novels, I have to rely upon my imagination to a great extent. I think of it as 'filling in the blanks.' Medieval chroniclers could be callously indifferent to the needs of future novelists. But I think there is a great difference between filling in the blanks and distorting known facts.

When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.

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

I really hate the term 'historical novel' - it reminds me of bodice-rippers. But I'm hooked on research, and I really, really enjoy it.

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 went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.

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.

For me, writing a historical novel was really hard. I love history as a subject and majored in it in college. I think, in a way, my training made it worse for me because I knew how important it was to focus on document-based analysis, and I really didn't want to get stuff wrong.

I love being educated by historical novels.