Alfred de Vigny Quotes

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.

We tend to regard history as true and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as untrue. That's always puzzled me.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says.

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.

Nothing is more difficult than trying to correct history.

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

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.

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

Do we sufficiently appreciate how omnipotent is opinion in the matter of all government? Do we consider especially in how true a sense it is the creator, must be the upholder, and may be the destroyer of our united government?

People are very resentful of elements in the history text books that are different from the history textbooks that they studied…. New knowledge has to be incorporated.

No policy that does not rest upon philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

The one challenge you have when you're going back into history is that people, unlike with today's news - we think we know what's happened already - we think that it's history and therefore less interesting.

A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood.

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

I think a lot of the history we've read up to this point, some of it is just off. It's written with the same prejudice that certain networks have when they report the news of the day.

To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire. It wants only to show what actually [essentially?] happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen).

History is written by victors and, occasionally, sensationalist journalists. I mean that with the best respect.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian citizenship in order to buy television stations in the United States, which is symptomatic of the way Murdoch operates. Everything is for sale, including his birthright. The Mirror is not read by soccer hooligans. It's read by ordinary people of this country. That comment is simply patronizing. But to be criticized by the Moonies and Murdoch in one breath is really just a fine moment for me.

The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect …[for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography.

Everyone keeps saying, "Oh my God, oh my God, how intimidating." It's like saying, "How could you date Jennifer Aniston after she's been with Brad Pitt?" I don't care.

[I wish no one ever asked me ] "Did you sign that petition implicating the Bush Administration in 9/11?" Because I never signed it, and I hate being vilified for a controversial idea I never espoused.