Hilary Mantel
She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.Collection: Stupid
As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire.Collection: Character
People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.Collection: Past
I was the subject of an experiment in love. I lived my life under her gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so that she would not have to undergo them for herself. But, how are our certainties forged, except by the sweat and tears of other people? If your parents don't teach you how to live; you learn it from books; and clever people watch you learn from your mistakes.Collection: Clever
Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.Collection: Book
By the tits of Holy AgnesCollection: Holy
I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.Collection: Book
It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.Collection: Jokes
So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?Collection: Years
You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.Collection: Crush
I think it is going to take another fifty years for the report to be in. If I were to give a preliminary report, I would say that [Margaret Thatcher] wrecked this country.Collection: Country
It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of... It's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really, really mess up your life.Collection: Girl
Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.Collection: Writing
When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date.Collection: Novelists
Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.Collection: Mean
Rafe asks him, could the king's freedom be obtained, sir, with more economy of means? Less bloodshed? Look, he says: once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, one you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant, the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection, his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle. Before he wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand.Collection: Running
No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.Collection: War
If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469Collection: Joy
In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.Collection: Perfect
Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you on the process rather than the result.Collection: Real
For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.Collection: Creative
[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.Collection: Heart
You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.Collection: Writing
People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.Collection: People
If the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set. The monarchy is mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting.Collection: Couple
When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.Collection: Fashion
One of the ideals [Margaret Thatcher] grew up with was self-denial and postponement of gratification, and yet she went about to create a greedy, short-term society. It is a paradox.Collection: Self
[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.Collection: Class
I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.Collection: Paper
I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.Collection: Thinking
I think the monarchy today is. . . mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go.Collection: Couple
There is so much else in the world that is more interesting [ than monarchy].Collection: Interesting
When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never there before. I didn't feel it was my history particularly, coming from Northern Britain, being of Irish extraction, being a cradle Catholic. The image of England I grew up with felt somewhere else. There was an official England in postcards, but it wasn't one I had visited. But I decided to march onto the center ground and occupy it whether it was mine or not.Collection: Book
To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.Collection: Lost Love
The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.Collection: Catholic
To me, Hillary [Clinton] looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn't seem to have distorted her essential nature.Collection: Essentials
[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.Collection: Running