“Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.” Quote by Hilary Mantel
“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be.” PeopleIfsShouldProblemLostSleepWalksPartyExerciseDrawsSticksStuckGet AwayPieDesksTelephonesListening To MusicBathsGoing To SleepWriter's Block 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
“Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.” WellsMadeIdeasFactsLastsDealsFictionMetaphorBonesMythSymbolsJournalismProseScraping Author:Hilary Mantel
“Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.” IndividualFictionTasteChairsPassiveInputMadeleines Author:Hilary Mantel
“For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.” KnowsWayBookDifferentRunningTogetherBitsLinesCommonKnow HowObjectsMetaphorDialogueNarrativeDescriptionIsolatedThreadConstructsSequenceScrapCollages Author:Hilary Mantel
“I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.” BookSchoolLyingLibraryShelvesStampsPublicationBorrowingSchool Library Author:Hilary Mantel
“Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward.” EndsPastYouthLegsPlanningConferences Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.” WritingPainCareersNeededDecidedConstantIllCuresAccommodate Author:Hilary Mantel
“It follows that if you are not a mother you are not a grandmother. Your life has become unpunctuated, whereas the lives of other women around you have these distinct phases.” IfsMotherGrandmotherPhasesLives Of Others Author:Hilary Mantel
“Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so many rainy winter nights, that the contents have seeped into me as if by osmosis.” IfsBookNightHouseWinterShelvesCollectorsRainyWinter NightOsmosis Author:Hilary Mantel