Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel, DBE FRSL, is an English writer whose work includes personal memoirs, short stories, and historical fiction...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 July 1952
past littles behinds
History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
protective polished has-beens
I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.
people shapes select
Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.
notebook moving half
Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.
writing linear novel
I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.
party careers lines
I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.
writing thinking should-have
I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'
thinking mountain information
I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information.
thinking talking mad
I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.
attention language pastiche
I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.
age bags cry
I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.
garden hands very-happy
I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
running silly boys
He turns to the painting. "I fear Mark was right." "Who is Mark?" "A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer." Gregory says, "Did you not know?
taken return moments
Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.