You Quotes by Hilary Mantel

11 You quotes by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel’s voice often turns the ordinary into something sharp and intimate. This handful of eleven entries shows how she frames the second‑person, offering a glimpse of her narrative precision without overwhelming the reader.

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When you get fat, you get a new personality. You can't help it. Complete strangers ascribe it to you.

Hilary Mantel

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

Hilary Mantel

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

Hilary Mantel

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The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish…

Hilary Mantel

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Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven't got the right pencil…

Hilary Mantel

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If you skew the endocrine system, you lose the pathways to self. When endocrine patterns change, it alters the way you think…

Hilary Mantel

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You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that…

Hilary Mantel

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

Hilary Mantel

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The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible, and if they are inconvenient, that's where the…

Hilary Mantel

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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

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

Hilary Mantel

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People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

Hilary Mantel

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“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

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“But what would happen … I mean, what would be so awful … if they did meet up?” “Why, it would be like the…

Hilary Mantel

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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

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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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Hilary Mantel

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“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

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“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

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