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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.

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
Wells
Hall
Well
Halls
Heretics
Made
Burning
Documented
Love
Asked
Brits
People
Proud
Heretic
Causes
Astonishment
Came
Thomas
Lost
Wolf

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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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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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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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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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I am very happy in second-hand bookshops would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
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I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way [Margaret Thatcher] did.
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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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[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.
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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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Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.
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Memory isn't a theme it's part of the human condition.
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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.
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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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Those who are made can be unmade.
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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 word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.
Hilary Mantel
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[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.
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[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.
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[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.
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I used to think that when I set out that doing the research was enough! But then the gaps would emerge that could only be filled by the imagination. And imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.
Hilary Mantel