Anthony Marra Quotes

The best writers attempt to become alternative historians.

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.

All the great history has been written with passion …. Fiction is history from below.

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

History is a fiction which actually happened; fiction is history which could have happened.

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.

I don't like super-descriptive modern fiction. I like, "Here's what was happening in 1582 all over the planet." Then that gets my imagination going.

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.

If I hadn't told stories, I would've been a historian.

To read a piece of material from a period drama told from the woman's perspective is just so unique.

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

There's a lot of fiction from that period that we're nostalgic for.

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.

I think both you and I, we live in a world of fiction and stories.

The moment there is imagination there is myth

Few people know anything of the English history but what they learn from Shakespear; for our story is rather a tissue of personal adventures and catastrophes than a series of political events.

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.