Hilary Mantel

“What for do we nail down the dead?”

— Hilary Mantel

By the tits of Holy Agnes

— Hilary Mantel

Those who are made can be unmade.

— Hilary Mantel

“By the hairy balls of Jesus”

— Hilary Mantel

“Arrange your face”

— Hilary Mantel

I do myself think that history is a set of skills rather than a narrative.

— Hilary Mantel

Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.

— Hilary Mantel

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

— Hilary Mantel

God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.

— Hilary Mantel

“Let me unfold to you,” he says, “the way my thoughts proceed.”

— Hilary Mantel

Every leader operates under the threat of assassination.

— Hilary Mantel

Like many people, I am addicted to the physical act of reading.

— Hilary Mantel

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

— Hilary Mantel

[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.

— Hilary Mantel

“I begin to understand you.” She nods. “The blacksmith makes his own tools.”

— Hilary Mantel

“If a man spoke to you in that tone, you'd invite him to step outside and ask someone to hold your coat." 378”

— Hilary Mantel

“He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.”

— Hilary Mantel

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

— Hilary Mantel

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

Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

— Hilary Mantel

“There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the…

— Hilary Mantel

“At least, he thinks, the fellow has the wit to see what this is about: not one year's grudge or two, but…

— Hilary Mantel

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

— Hilary Mantel

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind.…

— Hilary Mantel

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she…

— Hilary Mantel

“A pottery outside Paris was turning out his picture on thick glazed crockery in a strident yellow and blue. This is what…

— Hilary Mantel

Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you…

— Hilary Mantel

“it’s just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it’s quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being…

— Hilary Mantel

“I wonder what I’ve married into,” Morgan Williams says. But really, this is just something Morgan says; some men have a habitual…

— Hilary Mantel

“You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's…

— Hilary Mantel

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw,…

— Hilary Mantel

“All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he…

— Hilary Mantel

“as is usual in treason trials, they will have no legal representation. But they will have a chance to speak, and represent…

— Hilary Mantel

“Some people know they are condemned; some have time to pray, and others die struggling and screaming, fighting to their last breath.…

— Hilary Mantel

“And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his…

— Hilary Mantel

“I think back to those days after the Bastille fell, the Mercure Nationale run from the back of the shop, that little…

— Hilary Mantel

“He reaches for his pen. He yawns and puts it down and picks it up again. I shall be found dead at…

— Hilary Mantel

[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.

— Hilary Mantel

Beneath every history, another history.

— Hilary Mantel

“92, '93, '94. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death.”

— Hilary Mantel