History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people … - Amy Waldman

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. . . the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.

Amy Waldman

History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.

Dressed, Facts, Japan, People, Right

Same Author Quotes

As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.

Add, Confusion, Deal, Needs, Reality, Truth

As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.

Character, Trying, Novelists, Peel, Characters, Novelist

And as journalists we look for differences - differences between countries, cultures, classes, and communities. We're very sensitized to difference, but it's much harder to write about similarities across countries, cultures, classes, and communities.

Class, Classes, Countries, Country, Harder, Writing

My parents are aging and there are difficult issues. It's strange to have children at the beginning of life and parents nearing the end.

Children, Issues, Parent, Aging, Nearing, Parents

Marrying Cal, the scion of a family whose wealth dated to the Industrial Revolution and had multiplied through every turn of the American economy since, ought to have eased her worries about failing to climb as high as she believed she deserved. But the money was his, not theirs. The unspoken power this gave him kept her from asking: Why don't you stay home?

Asking Why, Eased, Gave, Home, Worries, Worry