Quote

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

Hilary Mantel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Hilary Mantel
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: July 6
Essayist
Film Critic
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Hilary Mary Thompson
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel
Novel
Half
Wolf
Writing
Hall
Think
Halls
Thinking
Page
Pages
Took
Along

More quotes by Hilary Mantel

Image
History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
Hilary Mantel
Image
When people begin to talk about our island story my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.
Hilary Mantel
Image
[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.
Hilary Mantel
Image
[Margaret Thatcher] assumed somehow that this would get the woman voter and all those juvenile male voters who wanted a well-regulated household with a woman who knew what she should be doing.
Hilary Mantel
Image
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
Hilary Mantel
Image
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
Hilary Mantel
Image
At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.
Hilary Mantel
Image
He turns to the painting. I fear Mark was right. Who is Mark? A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer. Gregory says, Did you not know?
Hilary Mantel
Image
To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.
Hilary Mantel
Image
[Margaret Thatcher] was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew.
Hilary Mantel
Image
Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.
Hilary Mantel
Image
She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?' He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.
Hilary Mantel
Image
Memory isn't a theme it's part of the human condition.
Hilary Mantel
Image
What [Margaret Thatcher] made a play for was the acquisitive: our greedy nature. She set aside other things like an identification with community, altruism. The only collective that she understood was: Rally around and slay the enemy.
Hilary Mantel
Image
What is it we are hating? It goes beyond politics. I suppose that my fascination with [Margaret Thatcher] is not just with her political record but with her as a phenomenon.
Hilary Mantel
Image
I think it is going to take another fifty years for the report to be in. If I were to give a preliminary report, I would say that [Margaret Thatcher] wrecked this country.
Hilary Mantel
Image
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.
Hilary Mantel
Image
It was unfortunate for other women who might come after [Margaret Thatcher] that the first woman to become prime minister was a male impersonator.
Hilary Mantel
Image
Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.
Hilary Mantel
Image
My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.
Hilary Mantel