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It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Hilary Mantel

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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
People
Fears
Desires
Absence
Fantasy
Frightens
Open
Fantasies
Knowledge
Pour
Desire
Anticipation
Facts
Gaps

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I am very happy in second-hand bookshops would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
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I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.
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This was an idea peculiar to Camille, Maximilien thought, that the worse things get, the better they get. No one else seems to think this way.
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Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.
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History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
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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.
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[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.
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I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But [Margaret Thatcher] carried it to extremes.
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[Margaret Thatcher] said there was no thing such as society. This is what I find so interesting psychologically. Where did she come from? She had no mother. Her father came from a very identifiable background: religious, highly conformist.
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The writer I adore is Ivy Compton-Burnett.I couldn't get more than a few pages in when I first read her. In many ways, she is very clumsy and her plots are rubbish. But we don't read her for that. There are pages and pages of dialogue. What it requires is real effort and attention.
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The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.
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It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.
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It's complementary. It's fairly clear where the boundaries are. When I start telling you the contents of his head, I am making it up. But I try to make it up based on what is on the record. So even my wildest speculations [on Thomas Cromwell] will have a root somewhere.
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No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.
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Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
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She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?' He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.
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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
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To me, Hillary [Clinton] looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn't seem to have distorted her essential nature.
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Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.
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If the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set. The monarchy is mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting.
Hilary Mantel