Historical Quotes
I want to be a good man, a good writer.""Be one or the other, Ernest, not both.
No man should be asked to live with so much sadness, and with so little promise of relief.
Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.
Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book. "Just remember not to try to hard with understanding it, " Sylvia says. "Like people, they're best not to be too thoroughly understood.
Birkenau simmered in the July sun like some hideous brew, a witch's potion of blood, sweat, smoke, and excrement worthy of something the weird sisters might have cooked up in Macbeth.
That spring was the start of everything, for me. Before then, I might have been half-asleep, drifting through life.
I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one.
It's no such thing! she said. It's friendship! And if you're a man who can't tell friendship from charity, then you're to be pitied!
Church words are easy to say, but they're not so easy to live by.
Cyrus is the meat and potatoes of my life, but Prudence was a cupcake I could enjoy just for the sheer sweetness of being with her.
Here's to the future, he said and lifted the glass to his mouth. There was a lump of regret stuck in his throat as he spoke the words, but he washed it down with the whiskey.
Madame, I believe the greatest sin against God is to be false. If one is not true to one's self, then it is impossible to be true to God. I bear you no ill will for following your heart.
A man's pride will cause him to do things you never dreamed possible. He got fired up about being right and blocked out everything else.
A man cannot change who he is. He can only hope that with age comes the wisdom to see his folly. I would like to believe I have achieved that.
It's said truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction makes truth a friend, not a stranger.
You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.
How age enamels us, she would say. It builds up in layers and locks us inside our own skin, stopping us from breaking out, preventing the outside from burrowing in.
Perhaps Zeus was king, but I was Spartan, a princess twice over, and queen of Athens besides. I knew my duty. And I would rule my own fate.
Tolerance over time breeds resentment. Only through understanding, that comes from the acceptance of one another's differences, shall we find true peace.
Stay with me?” His fingers wound into my hair, and his arm tightened around me. “Always.
What to do now, Father? I am going to die like a killer, and I do not even remember killing.”“You can pray, my son. You are in the hands of God now, ” said the good priest.
What you are about to witness is a blot upon the civilization of the twentieth century."- Sing Sing Deputy Warden Spencer Miller, Addressing Antonio Pontón’s execution witnesses on January 7, 1916
On Thanksgiving Day, during our family gathering, we pray you to have mercy on Antonio Pontón …
Dear Governor Whitman, … Our father is not a simple criminal. … He was harassed by more ideas than his mind could stand. …
Pardon me for this resolution … I know that this will be a disgrace that I bring to my people, but I cannot help it. Love is the blame for it. I go in peace ... pray for me ... good-bye all.
¡Hundieron el Maine!” said Manuel to his wife Etervina, as he read the newspaper on February 16, 1898. “They sank the Maine!
Manuel acquired as much land as he could afford and refused to sell it to anyone, even if he was not planting anything on it. “La tierra no se acaba” (“the land does not perish”), he often said.
All the characters in this book are fictional, but they are as real to me as the members of my own family. I had to tell their story because they could not.
Sheftu, ” she whispered, “it's all over.”“Nay, little one. It's just beginning. Many things are beginning.
Some things can be recovered. Some things can be restored. But some lost things, we seek forever.
It was always too late to retract, to try and retrieve what one had done.
The moment was all we truly had: a succession of moments, a triumphal march of them, to create a life beyond compare.
The porcelain doll residing in her white-pillared dollhouse was a mirage.
Julia Woodhull was many things: a lady of secrets, a patriot’s niece, and a dead man’s daughter. But one thing Julia Woodhull was most certainly not was a fool.
An American Family Sampler is a book any reader will find insightful, thoroughly researched, and fun to read. Robert Frump, author, award winning journalist, business leader
Six wives the King's had now.' Barak's words dragged me from my reverie. 'We can't even get one between us.
My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe
Moron, your bus is leaving-from Groundhogs Day Bill Murray
I guess I'd rather have a truthful neighbor who says he hates me than a lyin' one who claims he loves me.
Yessir, some things is sin 'cause God says so. Some things is sin 'cause they hurt other people. And some things is just pure-dee stupid.
Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artifact of your mental illness.
Some day...as you grow older, you will find imagination sometimes produces a truth that is greater than any fact.
