Raymond Queneau Quotes

I lay no claim, it should be clear, to being a historian. So in my books, the intimate and personal have been intertwined inextricably with the broad and historical.

Biography is the best history.

Biography is history seen through the prism of a person.

To the biographer all lives bar none are dramatic constructions.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

I do enjoy history. That's one of the things that I love about acting is you get a chance to really dive into history and develop a real personal opinion about it.

History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals

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.

History is a picture gallery where there are few originals and many copies.

I write to learn the flow of history.

I love to read history; at its best, it is an art.

History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.

I actually do think the history is so epic that it actually kind of writes itself.

History, like a badly constructed concert hall, has occasional dead spots where the music can't be heard.

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

It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

I've always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.

History is a big word... History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.

I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute.

History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.

Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.