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Quote by Hilary Mantel

“I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.”

Quote by Hilary Mantel

Author

British author Hilary Mantel is renowned for her historical novels, particularly for her Thomas Cromwell series, which has earned her international acclaim. Mantel's works are celebrated for their profound insights and literary achievements. more

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“If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.”

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“Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.”

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“Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.”

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“Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds.”

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“Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.”

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“'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.”

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“The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections.”

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Book:Nightwood

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“Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.”

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Author: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.”

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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.”

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Author:Hilary Mantel