“you come to understand that history might be, as Thomas Carlyle put it, a distillation of rumor, or, as Napoleon said, a set of lies generally agreed upon”

“A novel, or so-called fiction, if deeply researched and conscientiously written, might well contain as much truth as a high-school history textbook approved by a state board of education. But havin...”

“my own definition of bad historical fiction hits these points:It fails to transport the reader to a former time.It fails to put the reader in another place.It fails to bring characters to life.It f...”

“Before you're ready to tell that story well, you might have to study and learn the equivalent of an entire specialized college education on the society in which your story takes place, because all ...”

“Mortmain is an old French word that should be tattooed on the inside of any historical novelist's skull. This wonderful and terrible word means dead hand. Its definition is: The influence of the pa...”

“If you don't know what those old occupations were, how they were done, and how they interacted with the passersby, you're not prepared to write a historical novel. A historical figure doesn't pass ...”

“As the tension between the Protestants and the Church of Rome intensified, so did the desire for a third way among dissenting groups. Soon a new group emerged, though in some senses it was also an ...”

“Good men are often more practical than pretty " said Mother. "Andrius just happens to be both.”

“How did I get here How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn't want to lose I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania. Would I have liked him Would he h...”

“Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.”

“Memories of lost love they do enpain,Fleeting images of what once was never again to gain.Hold tight those memories that slip through the mind, To walk in those fields again with hera dream divi...”

“As she left the cold arena Angel had to laugh,Beaten by that of a wisp girl and her subliming cunning craft.Jove lay silent in his orbit; brooding, deep, dreamless forweep,And faithful dog Sirius r...”

“In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't ge...”

“If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?”

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”