Hilary Mantel Quotes
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For me, it is about using everything that is there and using the gaps in the record, figuring out why the gaps might be there. And then when you move on to the level of what historians said, laying the interpretations side by side. You also have to look back at the documents and make your own judgments. What the record says and what people say about it. A novelist can fill the gaps in a way that a biographer cannot.
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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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Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.
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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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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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Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
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So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?
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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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She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.
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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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I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way Margaret Thatcher did.
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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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Margaret Thatcher was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.
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[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.
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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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When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.
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If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469
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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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People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.
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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.