I do myself think that history is a set of skills rather than a narrative. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“I said to my mother, Henry VII is interesting. No he's not, my mother said.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
What fascinates me are the turning points where history could have been different. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
The more history I learnt, the less interested I got in winning arguments and the more interested in establishing the truth. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Account books form a narrative as engaging as any tale of sea monsters or cannibals.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“When you're writing historical fiction, you are always looking for the untold story. You're looking for what has been repressed politically, or… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography. They break the rules and admit the thing that is imagined, but is… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“He knows different now. It's the living that chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
For me, it is about using everything that is there and using the gaps in the record, figuring out why the gaps… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“The year now is 1774. Poseurs or not, it is time to grow up. It is time to enter the public realm,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“...and I sometimes think that the fading out of the individual personality is what one should desire, not the status of a… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
'Wolf Hall' attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“The hunter is among the most innocent of men; living in the moment makes him feel pure. When he returns in the evening, his… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“But what would happen … I mean, what would be so awful … if they did meet up?” “Why, it would be like the… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me. It… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“He wants to say, because Anne is not a carnal being, she is a calculating being, with a cold slick brain at work behind… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“Come to that, don't pay out good money for horoscopes. If things are going to go badly for you, is that what you need… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“But my sins are my strength, he thinks; the sins I have done, that others have not even found the opportunity of committing. I… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“Mirabeau: “If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king's will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“Sion calls Anne an eel, he calls her a slippery dipper from the slime, and he remembers what the cardinal had called her: my… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
“At the front, people die for their mistakes. Why should politicians be more gently treated? They made the war. They deserve a dozen deaths,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share
