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Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.

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
Past
Winter
Severity
Choice
Tongues
Cold
Endured
Proud
Attached
Days
Sharp
Choices
Fathers
Father
Mothers
Meatless
Mother
Tongue
Winters

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I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.
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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.
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If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy... 469
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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.
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