Khaled Hosseini Quotes

We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life.

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

I'm a historian in my own mind.

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

I write to learn the flow of history.

Every work of history is a combination of argument and narrative. The longer I write, the more I emphasize the narrative, the story, and the less attention I give to the argument. Arguments come and go.

I love to read history; at its best, it is an art.

Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.

Even the most meticulous historians work subjectively. The historian's point of view, his or her selection of subject and sources, the emphasis, the tone - all of these lead to subjective history, inevitably so. I do not say this as a criticism, merely as an observation.

History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.

The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation.

History, like a badly constructed concert hall, has occasional dead spots where the music can't be heard.

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

Let's say that history is what happened. The record of what happened is how each individual happens to see those events. They've already been filtered. When the historian or biographer takes over, history is no longer exactly what happened, because there has been a process of selection going on; it's impossible to write about anyone, any event, in any period of time, without in some way imposing, even unconsciously, your own standards, your own values.

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

History is an illogical record. It hinges on nothing. It is a story that changes, and has accidents, and recovers with scars.

I've always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.

History is a big word... History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.

I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute.

I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.