People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with. — 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… — 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
Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
When narratives fracture, when words fail, I take consolation from the part of my life that always works: the stationery order. The… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I was the subject of an experiment in love. I lived my life under her gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Novelists, it seems to me, are the very last people who should be asked to comment on the news of the day,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires. — 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
I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old… — 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
Sometimes people ask, 'Does writing make you happy?' But I think that's beside the point. It makes you agitated, and continually in… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
My childhood gave me a very powerful sense of being spooked. I didn't know whether what I was seeing were sensory images… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds. — 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
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