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[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.

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
Wasn
Knew
Running
True
Country
Thatcher
Like
Margaret
Household
Pretending

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I dislike pastiche it attracts attention to the language only.
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[Margaret Thatcher] admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother!
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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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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 would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.
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I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.
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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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If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back.
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Memory isn't a theme it's part of the human condition.
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