Quotes from Hilary Mantel

the lawyers' saying 'Le mort saisit le vif'? The dead grip the living. The prince dies but his power passes at the moment of his death, there is no lapse, no interregnum

As More says, it hardly makes a man a hero, to agree to stand and burn once he is chained to a stake. I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I cannot unlive my life.

Jesus Maria,' the boy says. 'The star that guides us to Bethlehem. I thought it was an engine for torture.

I was (an am) unsure about how I am related to my old self, or to myself from year to year. The hormonal profile of an individual determines much of the manifest personality. If you skew the endocrine system,you loose the pathways to the self. When endocrine patterns change it alters the way you think and feel. One shift in the pattern tends to trip another.

Already d'Anton did not believe this. He recognized it as a disclaimer that Camille would issue from time to time in the hope of disguising the fact that he was an inveterate hell-raiser.

The multitude," Cavendish says, "is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down—for the novelty of the thing.

If all the old stories are to be believed, and some people, let us remember, do believe them, then our king is one part bastard archer, one part hidden serpent, one part Welsh, and all of him in debt to the Italian banks

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

I you ask me about the monks, I speak from experience, not prejudice, and though I have no doubt that some foundations are well governed, my experience has been of waste and corruption. May I suggest to Your Majesty that, if you wish to see a parade of the seven deadly sins, you do not organise a masque at court but call without notice at a monastery?

I have noticed,' she says, 'common men often love their mothers. Sometimes they even love their wives.

We shall have to develop a hand signal for "Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter." He is surprised the Italians have not done it.

The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she wanted good taste she ordered it in the same way. The marchioness would run her hand over Florentine silks, making little squeaks of pleasure. "You bought it, Master Cromwell," she would say. "And very beautiful it is. Your next task is to work out how we pay for it.

Thomas More still has some credit with the king. And he has written him a letter, saying," he manages to smile, "that I am Wycliffe, Luther and Zwingli rolled together and tied up in string—one reformer stuffed inside another, as for a feast you might parcel a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose.

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography. They break the rules and admit the thing that is imagined, but is not licensed to be imagined.

He is tired out from the effort of deciphering the world. Tired from the effort of smiling at the foe.

My list of sins is so extensive that the recording angel has run out of tablets, and sits in the corner with his quill blunted, wailing and ripping out his curls.

I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.

Give me a book," she said. "A book of sermons, anything." "What do you want a book for?" "I want words. I've got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose.

One never anticipated the scale of it," Brissot whispered. "It was planned, yes, and people were paid—but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves." "And that upsets your plans?" "They have to be directed." Brissot shook his head. "We don't want anarchy.

Call no man happy. Call no man happy until he has gone down to his grave in peace.

He looks at Norris, exasperated. He seems to think that with eloquence, with sincerity, with frankness, he can change what is happening. The whole court has seen him slobbering over the queen. How could he expect to go shopping with his eyes, and finger the goods no doubt, and not have an account to settle at the end of it?

Every journey ends; terminates, at some pier, some mist-shrouded wharf, where torches are waiting.

Men will tell you that they are so in love with you that it is making them ill. They will say they have stopped eating and sleeping. They say that they fear unless they can have you they will die. Then, the moment you give in, they get up and walk away and lose all interest. The next week they will pass you by as if they don't know you.

He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet. It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate. The Boleyns are laid at his hand to be carved.