Peggy Noonan Quotes

As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.

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

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.

Personally, speaking as a historian and a storyteller, when it comes to inaccuracy in historical fictioneering, I follow the Shakespeare principle: I'm willing to overlook gobs of mistaken detail if the poetic valence is basically correct.

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

Sometimes a novelist can get closer to the truth than the historian can.

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

Oh do not read history, for that I know must be false.

I think it's fair to ask how truthful a film is as opposed to how factual it is.

'House of Cards' is aiming for truth, not accuracy.

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

History after all is the true poetry.

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

When you want to transcribe an idea truthfully from the page to the screen, it is not necessarily best to be particularly literal about it. It can be hard to convince people, specifically writers, of that.

I've always been a history buff. It was one of the few subjects at school that really, really caught me. I think you'll find a lot of actors will be interested in history because it sparks your imagination so much. When you enter a period of history, your imagination just goes wild in creating the world, which is really what acting is.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?