Quote

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

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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
Given
Stick
Years
Sticks
Handles
People
Handle
Anne
Rock
Forks
Rocks
Crystal
Present
Crystals
Year
Hopes
Use
Silver

More quotes by Hilary Mantel

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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.
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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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Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.
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When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.
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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.
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Those who are made can be unmade.
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When people begin to talk about our island story my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.
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[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me.
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Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
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My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.
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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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It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.
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I dislike pastiche it attracts attention to the language only.
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You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.
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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?
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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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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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I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'
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The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.
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Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
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