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
Beneath every history, another history.
statutes written
A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.
real believe writing
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.
memories theme human-condition
Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.
mean endurance purpose
Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.
running dog strong
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.
war looks sometimes
Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.
responsibility august law
He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
travel home ideas
Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.
strong crooks subtle
You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.
morning hate book
Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.
novelists chance historian
I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.
heart giving flesh
God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.
mean dark white
Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of '94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.