Quotes from Hilary Mantel

It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

The spectacles of pain and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain—the rain that falls on England and rots the grain, puts out the light in the man's eye and the light of learning too, for who can reason if Oxford is a giant puddle and Cambridge is washing away downstream, and who will enforce the laws if the judges are swimming for their lives?

You should not desire, he knows, the death of any human creature. Death is your prince, you are not his patron; when you think he is engaged somewhere, he will batter down your door, walks in and wipes his boots on you.

Bargain all you like. Consign yourself to the hangman if you must. The people don't give a fourpenny fuck." 512

I urge you both, undertake no course without deep thought: but learn to think very fast.

So this morning--waking early, brooding on what Liz said last night--he wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no sons? Possibly it's something women do: spend time imagining what it's like to be each other.

Thomas More syas that the imperial troops, for their enjoyment, are roasting live babies on spits. Oh, he would! says Thomas Cromwell. Listen, soldiers don't do that. They're too busy carrying away everything they can turn into ready money.

I said to my mother, Henry VII is interesting. No he's not, my mother said.

The hunter is among the most innocent of men; living in the moment makes him feel pure. When he returns in the evening, his body aches, his mind is full of pictures of leaves and sky; he does not want to read documents. His miseries, his perplexities have receded, and they will tay away, provided--after food and wine, laughter and exchange of storeis--he gets up at dawn to do it all over again. But the winter king, less occupied, will begin to think about his conscience.

The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them of of their clothes.

But remember this above all: defeat your instinct. Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win, and if not to win, then to die?

She turns her head away, but through the thin film of her veil he can see her skin glow. Because women will coax: tell me, just tell me something, tell me your thoughts; and this he has done.

Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in '91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me." He shook his head. "This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can't carry his country on the soles of his shoes.

They claim they're living the vita apostolica; but you didn't find the apostles feeling each other's bollocks.

He will remember his first sight of the open sea: a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream.

There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented or new things that pretend to be old.

At least, he thinks, the fellow has the wit to see what this is about: not one year's grudge or two, but a fat extract from the book of grief, kept since the cardinal came down. He says, 'Life pays you out, Norris. Don't you find?

They say Cain invented cities. And if it was not he, it was someone else fond of murder.

Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn't matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It's the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say. It is the processions that matter, the exchange of gifts, the royal games of bowls, the tilts, jousts and masques; these are not preliminaries to the process, they are the process itself.

When the cardinal came to a closed door he would flatter it--oh beautiful yielding door! Then he would try tricking it open. And you are just the same, just the same." He pours himself some of the duke's present. "But in the last resort, you just kick it in.

A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old. Your undivided church has liked nothing better than persecuting its own members, burning them and hacking them apart when they stood by their own conscience, slashing their bellies open and feeding their guts to dogs.

There are some strange cold people in this world. It is priests, I think...Training themselves out of natural feeling. They mean it for the best, of course.

When no one else could see, he could see: and that is what it means to be a king.

If kings do not see you, they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.