Books Quotes by Hilary Mantel

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

— Hilary Mantel

My first two novels were very black comedies.

— Hilary Mantel

I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

— Hilary Mantel

When you write, you are not either sex. But when you're read you are definitely gendered.

— Hilary Mantel

Novels teach you that actions have consequences. They help you grow up.

— Hilary Mantel

“Account books form a narrative as engaging as any tale of sea monsters or cannibals.”

— Hilary Mantel

“The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.”

— Hilary Mantel

“Leases, writes, statutes, all are written to be read and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.”

— Hilary Mantel

You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into…

— Hilary Mantel

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing…

— Hilary Mantel

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.

— Hilary Mantel

“I believe it’s fine to give up books even after a page; there’s so much to read in the world that will…

— Hilary Mantel

There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want…

— Hilary Mantel

When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you…

— Hilary Mantel

“The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned…

— Hilary Mantel

I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970,…

— Hilary Mantel

Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it,…

— Hilary Mantel

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

Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so…

— Hilary Mantel

My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms…

— Hilary Mantel

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

When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then…

— Hilary Mantel

“He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made,…

— Hilary Mantel

“Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years to write.” The book is bound in deepest green with a tooled border of…

— Hilary Mantel

Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly…

— Hilary Mantel

Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when…

— Hilary Mantel

Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes…

— Hilary Mantel

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

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

“A printing press that can write its own books? A mind that thinks about itself? If I don’t have it, at least…

— Hilary Mantel

“Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.”

— Hilary Mantel

“I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life.”

— Hilary Mantel

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

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

For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of…

— Hilary Mantel

“He cannot lock us all up.” “He has prisons enough.” “For bodies, yes. But what are bodies? He can take our goods,…

— Hilary Mantel

“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

When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a…

— Hilary Mantel

“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