Quotessence
Home / Authors / Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsThomas CromwellPeopleThinkingWritingBookWorldFirstsShouldWolf Hall

Famous Hilary Mantel Quotes

“Il re si siede e comincia a parlare, a sproloquiare. In quegli ultimi dieci anni e più Anna lo ha preso per mano e lo ha portato nella foresta. Lì, al margine del bosco, dove la luce del giorno si frantuma e filtra tra il verde, lui ha perso il senno, l'innocenza. Anna si è fatta rincorrere tutto il giorno, finché lui tremava sfinito, eppure non riusciva a fermarsi neanche per riprendere fiato, non poteva tornare indietro, aveva perso la strada. L'ha inseguita fino al tramonto, l'ha cercata alla luce delle torce. Poi lei gli si è scagliata contro, ha spento le torce e l'ha lasciato da solo nel buio.”

Historical FictionThomas CromwellAnne BoleynTudor
Book:Bring Up the Bodies
Create image

“He stepped back, looked up. Cut into the stone above his head were the words RUE MARAT. For a moment he had the urge to turn back around the corner, climb the stairs, shout to the servants not to bother unpacking, they’d be returning to Arcis in the morning. He looked up to the lighted windows above his head. If I go up there, he thought, I’ll never be free again. If I go up there I commit myself to Max, to joining with him to finish Hébert, and perhaps to governing with him. I commit myself to fishing Fabre out of trouble—though God alone knows how that’s to be managed. I put myself once more under the threat of assassination; I recommence the blood feuds, the denunciations. His face hardened. You can’t stand in the street calling into question the last five years of your life, just because they’ve changed the street name; you can’t let it alter the future. No, he thought—and he saw it clearly, for the first time—it’s an illusion, about quitting, about going back to Arcis to farm. I’ve been lying to Louise: once in, never out.”

French RevolutionPoliticsics
Book:A Place of Greater Safety
Create image

“The verse is about slippage, fall, reversal of fortune, the casting down of the great by the great: around the throne thunder rolls, circa regna tonat; even as he sits under his canopy of estate, the king hears it, he feels it shudder in the stone flags, he feels its reverberation in the bone. He pictures the bolts, hurled by the gods, falling through the crystal spheres where angels sit and pick the fleas from their wings: hurtling, spinning and plunging till, with a roar of white flame, they crash down on Whitehall and fire the roofs; tills they rattle the skeleton teeth of the abbey's dead, melt the glass in the workshops of Southwark, and fry the fish in the Thames.”

ProsepoetryMantel
Book:The Mirror & the Light
Create image

“Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You’re afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it’s because of another kind of love, isn’t it, that the duty is laid upon you?”

DutyRevolutionPatria
Book:A Place of Greater Safety
Create image

“…we know what to do with rebels here. They are dug into shallow graves, the Cornishmen who came up the country when he was a boy; but there are always more Cornishmen. And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marches of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and in hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will sear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.”

Wolf HallHilary Mantel
Book:Wolf Hall
Create image

“One tradesman the same as the next? Not in the real world. Any man with a steady hand and a cleaver can call himself a butcher: but without the smith, where does he get that cleaver? Without the man who works in metal, where are your hammers, your scythes, your sickles, scissors and planes? Your arms and armour, your arrowheads, your pikes and your guns? Where are your ships at sea and their anchors? Where are your grappling hooks, your nails, latches, hinges, pokers and tongs? Where are your spits, kettles, trivets, your harness rings, buckles and bits? Where are your knives?”

Wolf Hall
Book:Wolf Hall
Create image

“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 mess up your life. [Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview]”

FeminismFeministSexismHealthcareChronic IllnessChronic PainEndometriosisWomen S HealthcareMantelHilary Mantel
Author:Hilary Mantel
Create image

“Όταν οι άνθρωποι βρεθούν στην άλλη πλευρά, δεν ξέρουν πάντα που ακριβώς βρίσκονται. Έχουν έναν πόνο, ή την ανάμνηση ενός πόνου, παντού υπάρχουν άνθρωποι ντυμένοι στα λευκά, κάτι παράξενα, ακαθόριστα πρόσωπα που ξεπροβάλλουν απειλητικά, και κάπου στο βάθος ένας κρότος από μεταλλικά αντικείμενα που χτυπούν το ένα πάνω στο άλλο – κάτι σαν σύγκρουση τρένων κάπου πολύ μακριά… Σιγά σιγά όλα αρχίζουν να γίνονται ακαθόριστα, συγκεχυμένα. Σκέφτονται ότι θα περιμένουν στην ουρά έως ότου ασχοληθεί κάποιος μαζί τους, όμως δεν ασχολείται κανείς. Άλλοτε έχουν την εντύπωση ότι βρίσκονται μέσα σ’ ένα δωμάτιο, άλλοτε έχουν την αίσθηση του αέρα και του ανοιχτού χώρου και νομίζουν ότι τους εγκατέλειψαν σε κάποιο πάρκινγκ. Άλλοτε πάλι ότι βρίσκονται σ’ έναν διάδρομο πάνω σε φορείο και ότι δεν έρχεται κανείς να τους δει. Βάζουν τα κλάματα, αλλά πάλι δεν έρχεται κανείς. Βλέπεις, έχουν ήδη περάσει στην αντίπερα όχθη, αλλά νομίζουν ότι βρίσκονται σε δημόσιο νοσοκομείο.”

About Death
Book:Beyond Black
Create image

“…Και τότε η Αλ άρχισε να της μιλάει για το πόσο εύκολα σε προδίδουν οι νεκροί, για το πώς μεροληπτούν, για την ικανότητα τους να διεισδύουν, για το πώς εξαφανίζονται αφήνοντας πίσω τους τα κομμάτια τους, ή μπερδεύονται στα εσωτερικά σου όργανα..”

About Death
Book:Beyond Black
Create image

“He had once said to Cranmer, the dreams of kings are not the dreams of other men. They are susceptible to visions, in which the figures of their ancestors come to speak to them of war, vengeance, law and power. Dead kings visit them; they say, ‘Do you know us, Henry? We know you.’ There are places in the realm where battles have been fought, places where, the wind in a certain direction, the moon waning, the night obscure, you can hear the thunder of hooves and the creak of harness and the screams of the slain; and if you creep close — if you were thin air, suppose you were a spirit who could slide between blades of grass — then you would hear the aspirations of the dying, you would hear them cry to God for mercy. And all these, the souls of England, cry to me, the king tells him, to me and every king: each king carries the crimes of other kings, and the need for restitution rolls forward down the years.”

Dreams
Book:The Mirror & the Light
Create image

“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.”

IfsMeanGrowsDarkWhiteHigherCitizensProtectHighestSafetyRoundsSaintNecksFeminineThroatConventionsWornCommitteesPublic LifeObsceneRibbonsCrimsonPublic SafetyInversions
Author:Hilary Mantel
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingWantNeedsWritingFirstsWellsLittlesBookWholeMightHateMorningImpossibleAdviceBecomingExerciseTasksIncludingHarmManageBest ThingsKicksBeing The BestManualsBoostBoost Your Confidence
Author:Hilary Mantel
Create image