Said Sayrafiezadeh Quotes

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

I've been reading a lot of books on history, and watching a lot of educational TV. Wikipedia too, even though it is not reliable.

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.

Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it but, if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

I am a historian. I do a lot of research, and I try to get it right.

I think that when you're making a story... that's based on somebody, the filmmaker has his duty to do his research.

For 'The Journal of Finn Reardon,' I traveled to New York City and walked the streets where Finn and his friends would have lived, worked, and played. I visited the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street and toured an actual flat in which families like Finn's might have lived.

I'm reverent toward my sources. History is a team sport, and references are how you support your teammates.

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.

Everyone relates differently to contemporary stuff. They rely on you to do the research for a period film.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.

I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.

The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.

I do my best to build a strong factual foundation for each of my novels and rely upon my author's notes to keep my conscience clear.

Well, I think it can be quite helpful to be working on a character who actually existed, historically. Of course, you might have material to study and help you create the character.

I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false.

I have never known a great deal about any of the historical figures I have written about until I actually started researching the book. If I knew a great deal about the person, I would not have been interested in writing the book.

On a normal novel, I would like to get 2,000 to 2,500 words done in a day; I average 10,000 words a week, and then there's a day for planning. With the historical ones, it's a lot harder because you have to stop and double-check facts.

Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels, but on history books, like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem, I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is curiosity!

I've done quite a few things based on real events or real people, and I think that's always really interesting that you can read about them or, if you're lucky, you can meet them.