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Quote by 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.”

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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“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.”

Knows Way Book Different Running Together Bits Lines Common Know How Objects Metaphor Dialogue Narrative Description Isolated Thread Constructs Sequence Scrap Collages

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.”

Book School Lying Library Shelves Stamps Publication Borrowing School Library

Author:Hilary Mantel

“Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward.”

Ends Past Youth Legs Planning Conferences

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.”

Writing Pain Careers Needed Decided Constant Ill Cures Accommodate

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.”

Ifs Mother Grandmother Phases Lives 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.”

Ifs Book Night House Winter Shelves Collectors Rainy Winter Night Osmosis

Author:Hilary Mantel

“When I was thin, I had no notion of what being fat is like. When I worked in a department store, I had sold clothes to women of most sizes, so I should have known; but perhaps you have to experience the state from the inside, to understand what fat is like.”

Should States Known Clothes Should Have Notion Size Stores Fats Department Department Stores Should Have Known Being Fat

Book:Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir

Source: Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir

“When narratives fracture, when words fail, I take consolation from the part of my life that always works: the stationery order. The mail-order stationery people supply every need from royal blue Quink to a dazzling variety of portable hard drives.”

People Needs Hard Order Failing Blue Variety Narrative Mail Royal Consolation Dazzling Fracture Stationery Royal Blue

Author:Hilary Mantel

“When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.”

Feels Writing Enough Wind Paper Committed Pens Spine Quills

Book:Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir

Source: Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir

“A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”

Source: The Quality of Courage