Hilary Mantel (Dame Hilary Mary Mantel) Quotes
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
Quotes to Explore
-
We're all concerned about sports rights being so expensive. Obviously, we are funded by the licence fee payers, so it's not always easy to compete with those who can get greater revenue.
-
When you're a child, it's easy to see school as the worst thing in the world. It's only later in life you realise what a wonderful time it was. Looking back, I can't believe I even wanted to leave.
-
I learned so much in Zimbabwe, in particular about the need for humility in our ambition to extend mental health care in countries where there were very few psychiatrists and where the local culture harboured very different views about mental illness and healing. These experiences have profoundly influenced my thinking.
-
Playing different characters in different films helps keep you excited about what you do. It always seems like a whole new adventure.
-
I wrote music as soon as I knew notation.
-
Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
-
I knew that I wanted to be an actor; how to go about it was the question. I went to Australia for my studies; from there I told my dad that I also want to do a course in performing arts, but my father refused. So I completed my studies and came back. But I kept poking him, saying that acting is something that I want to do.
-
I don't need fame and I don't need power and I don't need wealth. I'm in need of friends, which I have found in abundance.
-
I've decided to recast myself as Utopian. I like this landscape of the M25 and Heathrow. I like airfreight offices and rent-a-car bureaus. I like dual carriageways. When I see a CCTV camera, I know I'm safe.
-
Any acting is a stretch of the imagination. That's your job. Acting is truth in imaginary circumstances. Acting with green screen or a motion capture stage, you're striving for absolute truth in absolutely imaginary circumstances.
-
What is the world coming to?
-
I love Gwen Stefani. I'd watch what she'd wear over and over again and think, 'How do I nail this style?' And then, I like that classic beauty, too. Audrey Hepburn, she's so elegant.
-
I became Iggy because I had a sadistic boss at a record store. I'd been in a band called the Iguanas. And when this boss wanted to embarrass and demean me, he'd say, 'Iggy, get me a coffee, light.'
-
Music has always been around with me.
-
Let's all strive to be more entrepreneurial, and I think we'll all be in a better place.
-
Officials in the George W. Bush administration later criticized the cruise missile strikes that were ordered by President Bill Clinton in Afghanistan in 1998 as only 'pounding sand.'
-
At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age.
-
I'm drawn to the unconventional because I've been drawn unconventionally. I believe that I'm supposed to topple over these false images of what's idealistically beautiful. Because, of course, these intangible qualities are very attractive to women. Sincerity. Sense of humor. Success.
-
I always felt God had called me to serve within the church because of what the church stands for. This has always been home.
-
If you take real-life circumstances and take out all the pauses then you have a thriller. It has to be non-stop, high stakes and fascinating all the time. Real life is like that from time to time.
-
Most bands don't make it past two albums and tours, if that. We pulled it off, and everybody's been happy and cool, but we got to the point where we knew it was time to take a break.
-
When you take a child who's hollering like hell, sit him on your knee, and say "once upon a time", you stop him hollering. As long as you go on telling him a story, he will listen. Novelists who neglect this fundamental effect do so at their peril. They become what is known as the experimental novelist, and an experimental novel is not really a novel at all.
-
The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.
-
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
