Quotes from Hilary Mantel

In his student days he was known for a sharp slanderous tongue, for irreverance to his seniors, for drinking and gaming for high stakes. But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we were like at twenty?

A pottery outside Paris was turning out his picture on thick glazed crockery in a strident yellow and blue. This is what happens when you become a public figure; people eat their dinners off you.

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.

I had read all the books so hard that when I gave them back the print was faint and gray with exhaustion

My conscience holds with the majority, which makes me know it does not speak false. "Against Henry's kingdom, I have all the kingdoms of Christendom. Against each one of your bishops, I have a hundred saints. Against your one parliament, I have all the general councils of the church, stretching back for a thousand years.

A printing press that can write its own books? A mind that thinks about itself? If I don't have it, at least the King of France doesn't either.

Show me where it says, in the Bible, "Purgatory." Show me where it says "relics, monks, nuns." Show me where it says "Pope.

But what do they get by the change? One dog sated with meat is replaced by a hungrier dog who bites nearer the bone. Out goes the man grown fat with honor, and in comes a hungry and a lean man.

they were intent on framing a 'Declaration of the Rights of Man'. Some were heard to mutter that the Assembly should write the constitution first, since rights exist in virtue of laws, but jurisprudence is such a dull subject, and liberty so exciting.

For it is a truth, that fortune is inconstant, fickle and mutable.

I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased— it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe's heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M.Danton.

Troubled men both, he thinks, Wriothesley and Riche, and alike in some ways, sidling around the peripheries of their own souls, tapping at the walls: oh, what is that hollow sound?

The order goes to the Tower, 'Bring up the bodies.' Deliver, that is, the accused men, by name Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris, to Westminster Hall for trial. Kingston fetches them by barge; it is 12 May, a Friday.

A man called William Dalyvell, a follower of Merlin and King James, is put into the Tower. He has been spreading a prophecy that the King of Scots will swoop down from the north, expel the Tudors and rule two kingdoms. He also says he has seen an angel. In former ages this would have been a cause for congratulation, but times being what they are, Dalyvell is put on the rack.

The dead wander the lanes of the next life like strangers lost in Venice.

As for the future, the king's desires move swiftly and the law must run to keep up.

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.

The king had talked of a ceremony at midsummer. But now there are rumours of plague and sweating sickness. It is not wise to allow crowds in the street, or pack bodies into indoor spaces.

What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.

In his day, castles repaired themselves, and all beggars were Christ in disguise.

History is not the past - it is the method we have evolved to organize our ignorance of the past. It is the record of what's left on the record... It is no more 'the past' than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey.

You know he will take the credit for your good ideas, and you the blame for his bad ones? When fortune turns against you, you will feel her lash: you always, he never. One day, when you are still adjusting your harness, you will look up and see him thundering downhill.

When you become a great man, you meet kinsfolk you never knew you had.

The Revolution is your bride," he said. "As the Church is the Bride of Christ.