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.
Understanding the true causes of the Depression, as well as the real economic record of the United States in the 1930s, is an essential ingredient in anyone's economic and historical education.
Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.
To have united the purposes of an entire Nation, is the great historical achievement of the man in whose strong hands our President has placed the fate of our people.
The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right.
In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.
I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.
It's appropriate to celebrate public service, and the thoughtful people who choose to serve. They symbolize what is good and decent about this historic citizen legislature, and we thank them.
And it also became clear that these conditions of inequality and historical injustice have given rise to a feeling of hate in the world - a deeply felt hate that cannot easily be overcome with a few good words.
I feel a great responsibility playing a historical figure because whether they were good or bad, I feel like the person deserves a fair shake. It's like being the executor of their estate in some ways.
Obama prefers to look forward, not back, as he has stated. So at least during his tenure, there will be no reliable record compiled as a cautionary tale for lawmakers and presidents in future times of crisis. This is the historical Obama.
It's still funny for me to think of myself as someone who writes historical fiction because it seems like a really fusty, musty term, and yet it clearly applies.
Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society, you're funny.
Literature - novels, plays, and poems - can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.
We in Illinois are very fortunate to have a number of historic structures that have added immeasurably to the cultural life of the state, to the tourism industry of the state which by the way is our number one industry.
The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.
I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.
During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universit...
I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans.
Obviously, I love to do both contemporary and historical fiction. When a hint of a story grabs me, I try to go with it to see where it will take me whatever the setting.
The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.
