Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, DBE FRSL (/mænˈtɛl/ man-TEL; born Thompson, 6 July 1952), is an English writer whose work includes personal memoirs, short stories, and historical fiction.
People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.
Fortitude. . . . It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.
Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.
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.
As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.
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.
[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.
I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.
I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.
History is a set of skills rather than a narrative.
[Margaret Thatcher] scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper.
If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back.
What [Margaret Thatcher] made a play for was the acquisitive: our greedy nature. She set aside other things like an identification with community, altruism. The only collective that she understood was: Rally around and slay the enemy.
I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.
And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn't it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?
The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.
One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.
If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy. . . " 469