Hilary Mantel Quotes
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So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?
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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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Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
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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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I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.
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I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
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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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Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.
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Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
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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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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 can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way Margaret Thatcher did.
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Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you on the process rather than the result.
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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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Margaret Thatcher was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.
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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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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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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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He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
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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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When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.
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The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.
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There is so much else in the world that is more interesting than monarchy.