I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want… — 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
“He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly… — 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
Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“In the first play, the crisis is Thomas More. In the second it’s Anne Boleyn. In the third book, and the third… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Leases, writes, statutes, all are written to be read and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“The page of an accounts book is there for your use, like a love poem. It’s not there for you to nod… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years to write.” The book is bound in deepest green with a tooled border of… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again.… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
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… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
When you write, you are not either sex. But when you're read you are definitely gendered. — 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
“The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
