An action doesn't have to be wrong just because it is not logical. It doesn't have to be right just because it has its logic.

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past.

Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.

What is a historian, anyway? It is someone who uses facts to record the development of humanity.

Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

It is only the strong who are strengthened by suffering; the weak are made weaker.

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.