The historian records, but the novelist creates.

E.m. Forster
The historian records, but the novelist creates.
The historian records, but the novelist creates.
The historian records, but the novelist creates.
The historian records, but the novelist creates.
About This Quote

The historian records, but the novelist creates. In this quote, the author is saying that historians record what has happened. They don’t invent it. Historians leave no room for interpretation because they simply record facts and events as they happened.

Novelists, however, create stories. They can imagine things that have never happened and then imagine them as having happened in the past. Obviously, the novelist must be very imaginative and creative because he or she can create a story using things that have never actually happened.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. It's like I get into a roller coaster, and sit there while it goes up and down and upside down and sometimes I get thrown out and I hit my head, but I crawl back in again and the moment I'm back in, it just... - C. Joybell C.

  2. Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writersmystics, painters, troubadoursfor they teach us to see the world through different eyes. - Jacob Nordby

  3. If everyone could be a successful and rich author, there would be no point in working so hard. Where is the fun in that? - L.A. Jones

  4. I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to... - C. Joybell C.

  5. I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this., New York Times, April 19, 1992] - Cormac McCarthy

More Quotes By E.m. Forster
  1. It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

  2. This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to...

  3. We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very...

  4. The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

  5. Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

Related Topics