“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.” ThinkingWritingWholeStoriesUsedTurnsThreeCareersNovelHappenedHistoricalShort StoryHistorical Novels Author:Hilary Mantel
“My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.” WritingFirstsBookRomanceNovelHistoricalGenreRespectableBosomsSwellingHistorical Novels Author:Hilary Mantel
“People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.” PeopleWantPastFictionNovelEnglandHistoricalHistorical Fiction Author:Hilary Mantel
“A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.” ShouldBookAnswersNovel Author:Hilary Mantel
“I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'” ThinkingShouldWritingHas BeensHalfNovelPagesShould HaveHallsShould Have Been Author:Hilary Mantel
“I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.” WritingNovelRationalThinkerLinearOrganised Author:Hilary Mantel
“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.” WritingYearsI CanNovelGreaterRevolutionSixSafetyHistoricalPlotBecause I CanFrench RevolutionHistorical Novels Author:Hilary Mantel
