Hilary Mantel Quotes
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It's complementary. It's fairly clear where the boundaries are. When I start telling you the contents of his head, I am making it up. But I try to make it up based on what is on the record. So even my wildest speculations on Thomas Cromwell will have a root somewhere.
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I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.
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I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.
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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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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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I think the monarchy today is. . . mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go.
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I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.
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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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Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.
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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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Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.
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I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way Margaret Thatcher did.
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[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.
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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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He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.
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So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?
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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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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 is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
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I believe this was Margaret Thatcher estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household."
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You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.
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I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.
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Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.
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It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.