Quotes from Hilary Mantel

What does St. Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels?

I have probably, he thinks, gone as far as I can to accommodate them. Now they must accommodate me, or be removed. . .

My lord Norfolk curses the day laymen began to read the scriptures. "Blessed are the meek!" he says. "With all respect to our Saviour, you don't want that notion to get around an army camp.

as a writer] you take up a life in your imagination, in which you can live all the other parts of yourself that you didn't become. And you can live in all the eras; the fact that you happened to be born in a certain place, in a certain dictate - the imagination doesn't accept these limitations.

Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of '94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.

the wise prince is not always the most popular prince;

Messengers wait outside the door, to carry urgent orders for release. It is difficult, when the pen skips over a name, to associate it with the corpse it might belong to, tomorrow or the day after that. There is no sense of evil in the room, just tiredness and the aftertaste of petty squabbling. Camille drinks quite a lot of Fabre's brandy. Towards daybreak, a kind of dismal camaraderie sets in.

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 elsewhere, he will batter down your door, walk in and wipe his boots on you.

But our secrets do not keep us. They worry at us; they wear us away, from the inside out.

I can't divide Camille's loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice.

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.

So, Lucile thinks, Gabrielle has the prospect of escape; but in her apartment at the rue des Cordeliers, she sits still and silent, in the conscious postures of pregnant women. Sometimes she cries; this chit Louise Gély trips down the stairs to join her in a few sniffles. Gabrielle is crying for her marriage, her soul and her king; Louise is crying, she supposes, for a broken doll or a kitten run over in the street. Can't stand it, she thinks. Men are better company.

John More, Gregory Cromwell, what have we done to our sons? Made them into idle young gentlemen—but who can blame us for wanting for them the ease we didn't have?

At the front, people die for their mistakes. Why should politicians be more gently treated? They made the war. They deserve a dozen deaths, each of them. What can we try them for, except for treason, and how can you punish treason, except by death?

Nobody knows how long the arrests wil go on and who else will be taken. He feels even he does not know, and he is in charge of it.

Hans nods emphatically, lips pressed together, eyes bright and taunting, like a dog who steals a handkerchief so you will chase

This relentless bonhomie of yours, I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out and we see the base metal.

Write the book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Forgetting is an art like other arts. It needs dedication and practice.

Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered

My daughter Mary is the product of a union illegitimate. If Katherine would not acknowledge the sin in this life, as she would not, then I fear she will suffer for it in the place where she is now.' Peterborough, he thinks.

Audley pats his arm. He wants to console him. But who can begin to do it? He si the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell.

Laclos thought, how about a one-way ticket to Pennsylvania? You'd enjoy life among the Quakers. Alternatively, how about a nice dip in the Seine?

Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.