“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor
Time (26 June 2006)
“The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth.”
Pastor Jón Prímus
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)
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Halldór Laxness216
Icelandic author 1902–1998Related quotes
“The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.”
Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic
Page 269.
Stepping Westward (1965)
Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader
Quinn (ed), Faithful History: Essays On Writing Mormon History, p 103, fn 22
“The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”
Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer
Sect. 39; vol. 2, p. 128; H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (trans.) The Works of Lucian of Samosata.
How to Write History
“The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”
Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer
Source: Death Bringer
Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian
Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1986), 815. ISBN 0-394-74623-6.
“He will tell you no lies, for he is an excellent person.”
III. 328 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician
As quoted in "If Elected I Promise … " Stories and Gems of Wisdom by and About Politicians (1969) by John F. Parker