Hilary Mantel Quotes
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I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.
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Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so many rainy winter nights, that the contents have seeped into me as if by osmosis.
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Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.
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He turns to the painting. "I fear Mark was right." "Who is Mark?" "A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer." Gregory says, "Did you not know?
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For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.
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If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be.
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Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
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You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.
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Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
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History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
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And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn't it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?
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Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.
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But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
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It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.
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History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
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[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.
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You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.
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You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.
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We have a number of very powerful women in the world now - Mrs. Angela Merkel, who the Germans call Mutti. What did we call Mrs. Margaret Thatcher? When she was minister of education, she stopped the children's free school milk. This may sound quaint, but after the war we were such a malnourished nation that part of the founding of the welfare state were public health initiatives. Every little schoolchild got milk. Mrs. Thatcher stopped it. They called her "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher."
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Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
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You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’ ‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.
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He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.
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She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.
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Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.