An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings.
Margaret MacmillanRead
How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the limitations of creative imagination compared to the remarkable characters and stories found in history.
Margaret Macmillan suggests that no fiction can compete with the extraordinary lives and stories of historical figures like Augustus Caesar and Florence Nightingale. The richness of human experience, filled with unique characters and profound events, provides a deeper and more compelling narrative than any story that can be crafted by a novelist or playwright. This highlights the power of history and the amazing drama that has unfolded over time, which serves as a reminder of the complexity of human existence.
Themes
HistoryCreativityStorytellingHuman ExperiencesArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of historical knowledge in storytelling.
More from Margaret Macmillan
All quotes →Climate change respects no borders.
Margaret MacmillanRead
War is a crucial, deeply ingrained part of human history. It has to be understood.
Margaret MacmillanRead
There was that argument that if we had more women in positions of authority, the world would be a nicer place. And then we got Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi. When women become acclimatised to war, they can become every bit as ruthless as men.
Margaret MacmillanRead
Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.
Margaret MacmillanRead
If we don't take responsibility for each other, it seems to me the future is going to be even bleaker.
Margaret MacmillanRead
Similar quotes
If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back.
James FentonRead
The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.
Katharine HepburnRead
I've played guitar in so many different styles, and I want to revisit them all.
Jimmy PageRead
Movies, they take years of my life, so I'm fortunate that I get to work in a lot of different mediums.
Spike JonzeRead
Creativity, which is the expression of our originality, helps us stay mindful that what we bring to the world is completely original and cannot be compared.
Bren BrownRead
I am never happier than when I have something to compose, for that, after all, is my sole delight and passion
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartRead