“A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"”

— M. R. James

Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911); cited from Michael Cox (ed.) Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp. 337-8.

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M. R. James4

British writer 1862–1936

Alistair Cameron Crombie (1915–1996) Australian zoologist, historian of science

Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)

“The perception of time among these mostly illiterate thirteenth-century inhabitants of Languedoc may at first strike the twentieth-century reader as vague at best. They did not always know exactly how old they were, and their sense of history was strictly local.”

René Weis (1953)

Source: The Yellow Cross, (2000), p. 19

“This is an imaginary story (which may never happen, but then again may) about a perfect man who came from the sky and did only good.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

It tells of his twilight, when the great battles were over and the great miracles long since performed; of how his enemies conspired against him and of that final war in the snowblind wastes beneath the Northern Lights; of the women he loved and of the choice he made between them; of how he broke his most sacred oath, and how finally all the things he had were taken from him save one. It ends with a wink. It begins in a quiet midwestern town, one summer afternoon in the quiet midwestern future. Away in the big city, people still sometimes glance up hopefully from the sidewalks, glimpsing a distant speck in the sky... but no: it's only a bird, only a plane — Superman died ten years ago. This is an imaginary story... aren't they all?
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (1986)

“A work of art must narrate something that does not appear within its outline. The objects and figures represented in it must likewise poetically tell you of something that is far away from them and also of what their shapes materially hide from us. A certain dog painted by Courbet (French 19th century painter) is like the story of a poetic and romantic hunt.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

1919
as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 440
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913