Hilary Mantel

“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

“Sometimes I'm at stool all night." 507”

— 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

“Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny...); who cannot show that they…

— Hilary Mantel

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince…

— Hilary Mantel

I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?

— Hilary Mantel

“I you ask me about the monks, I speak from experience, not prejudice, and though I have no doubt that some foundations…

— Hilary Mantel

“Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only…

— Hilary Mantel

“When he was at the Vatican, in Cardinal Bainbridge’s day, he quickly saw that no one in the papal court grasped what…

— Hilary Mantel

I think psychologically [Margaret Thatcher] is really worth studying. I am reading Charles Moore's biography of her, and he has gotten us…

— Hilary Mantel

“Collot is back from Lyon, did you know? He had finished his work, as he describes it. His path of righteousness is…

— Hilary Mantel

“in those days his treason stood still to be proved. This is not Italy, boy. We have courts of law.”

— Hilary Mantel

“She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.”

— Hilary Mantel

He turns to the painting. "I fear Mark was right." "Who is Mark?" "A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn.…

— Hilary Mantel

“When have I, when have I ever forced anyone to do anything, he starts to say: but Richard cuts in, "No, you…

— 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

“Of course I have had to rearrange the text a bit— bugger about with it, as Hébert would say.”

— Hilary Mantel

“He never lives in a single reality, but in a shifting shadow-mesh of diplomatic possibilities.”

— Hilary Mantel

“This was the usual thing. What I asked for was facts: what I got was a sermon.”

— Hilary Mantel

“Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called…

— Hilary Mantel

“Men like Carew, he knows, tend to blame him, Cromwell, for Anne’s rise in the world; he facilitated it, he broke the…

— 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

“Jane says, ‘He asked me if I would be his good mistress.’ They exchange glances. There is a difference between a mistress…

— Hilary Mantel

Writing comes from that territory of being invalidated. But I had a sense of purpose, too. I wanted to stop apologising for…

— Hilary Mantel

“He would have explained, if he’d known what sort of explanation Wykys would understand. I gave up fighting because, when I lived…

— Hilary Mantel