“History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Our virtues make us; but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times — 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
Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Since I was a very small child, I've had a kind of reverence for the past, and I felt a very intimate… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Oh, you are not disappointing,” Henry says. “But the moment you are, I will let you know.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“In these matters, the cardinal says, there is no measure of time; these spirits slip from our hands and through the ages,… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Already d'Anton did not believe this. He recognized it as a disclaimer that Camille would issue from time to time in the… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Every time you go to see Hamlet you don't expect it to have a happy ending...you're still enthralled. (Interview BBC Radio 4… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“It is not the stars that make us, Dr. Butts, it is circumstance and necessita , the choices we make under pressure;… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“So this morning--waking early, brooding on what Liz said last night--he wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“When it was time to write, and he took his pen in his hand, he never thought of consequences; he thought of… — 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
“The hunter is among the most innocent of men; living in the moment makes him feel pure. When he returns in the… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Some people know they are condemned; some have time to pray, and others die struggling and screaming, fighting to their last breath.… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
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
“Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I think it would save time and work if all the interested parties came to the council, including foreign… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“So often in council he has taken Katherine’s part, as if he were one of her appointed lawyers. ‘You make this argument,… — 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
“It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the atteint ; he takes… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“But Parliament cannot see how it is the state's job to create work. Are not these matters in God's hands, and is… — 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
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
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
“But what would happen … I mean, what would be so awful … if they did meet up?” “Why, it would be… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Possibly it’s something women do: spend time imagining what it’s like to be each other. One can learn from that, he thinks.” — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
Psychics tap into what is collective: our regret and our sense of time going by; our common repression and anxieties. — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“He wonders again if the dead need translators; perhaps in a moment, in a simple twist of unbecoming, they know everything they… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm… — Hilary Mantel Copy Share Image
“Georges was in a rage. It is a spectacle to comtemplate, his rage. He tore off his cravat, strode about the room,… — 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
