Pamela Sargent Quotes

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.

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

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.

If you read any of my books, they tend to have a strong historical perspective.

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.

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.

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.

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

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

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.

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 think fiction recues history from its confusions.

When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting, we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples - and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will.

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

One of the great lessons I learned about historical fiction from writing 'Loving Frank' is that you don't try to disguise what people did; my approach was to try to understand the characters and why they did what they did.

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.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

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.

I like the stories with the historical themes.

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.

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.

I think any period in history can be adapted into interesting fiction, as long as you approach the actual history with respect.

There I was limited to what happened the same way I am with Riel. It doesn't feel like a great burden to have your story, to some degree, set. I am enjoying figuring out what I think is the most dramatic way of telling this set of historical facts.

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.