For me, history is always personal. And it's how your personal history interacts with the history of your time. I'm very attracted to characters who were cursed, as the Chinese say, to live in interesting times.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.
History often reads as a hard and grim experience. But people are remarkably resilient and funny, even when the going is very hard.
I love to have real people of history interact with my fictional characters. History gives me the plot. I research the period meticulously, and then I blend in a romantic and sensual love story to give it balance. The heavier the history, the more romantic the couple must be.
History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.
History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.
So often, we don't realize that the very moments in which we live become our history, our story.
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
I love history because when you strip away the social and political aspects, it's really just a bunch of fun stories.
History releases me from my own experience and jogs my fictional imagination.
What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint.