Quotes from Hilary Mantel

within weeks, you can run up and down easily, your feet knowing exactly where to go. But only in your own house. On another man's steps, look out.

He would like her to shorten her account, but he understands her need to tell it over, moment by moment, to say it out loud. It is like a package of words she is making, to hand to him: this is yours now.

But now I am as sweet as a May morning.

It would have been quite in order to slap his face, but what a cliché, she thought, and besides she was off balance. She had always wanted to do it to someone, but would have preferred someone more robust; so, between one thing and another, the moment passed.

All the rivers run into the sea, but the seas are not yet full.

Later that day he walks back into a panelled chamber at Greenwich. It is the last day of 1530. He eases off his gloves, kidskin scented with amber. The fingers of his right hand touch the turquoise ring, settling it in place.

How close we hug our enemies! They are our familiars, our other selves.

Late May, he demanded without success the abolition of the death penalty.

For a month he is at home: he reads.

So where are you living now?' Danton inquired. 'On the rue Saintonge in the Marais.' 'Comfortable?' Robespierre didn't reply. He couldn't think what Danton's standard of comfort might be, so anything he said wouldn't mean much. Scruples like this were always tripping him up, in the simplest conversations

he leaves the church, Henry puts on his hat. It is a big hat, a new hat. And in that hat there is a feather.

Anne Cromwell sits with him, as the rain falls, and writes her beginner's Latin in her copy book. By St John's Day she knows all common verbs. She is quicker than her brother and he tells her so. 'Let me see,' he says, holding out his hand for her book. He finds that she has written her name over and over, 'Anne Cromwell, Anne Cromwell …

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.

They arrived on a Sunday, two vengeful grandees: the Duke of Norfolk a bright-eyed hawk

Hunters, it is said, live longer than other men; they sweat hard and stay lean; when they fall into bed at night they are tired beyond all temptation; and when they die, they go to Heaven.

There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented, or new things that pretend to be old. To be trusted, new men must forge themselves an ancient pedigree, like Walter's, or enter into the service of ancient families. Don't try to go it alone, or they'll think you're pirates.

Harsh, yes . . . but the question is, have you picked your prince? Because that is what you do, you choose him, and you know what he is. And then, when you have chosen, you say yes to him—yes, that is possible, yes, that can be done. If you don't like Henry, you can go abroad and find another prince, but I tell you—if this were Italy, Katherine would be cold in her tomb.

distraught. It seems he claims

Do you think this plague will be over by the time I return? They say these visitations are all from God, but I can't pretend to know his purposes.

Petrarch writes, "between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed toward death. We are always dying—I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying.

Here's a bargain. You can take him to a sermon if you don't take him to a brothel." Mercy, he suspects, comes from a family where John Wycliffe's writings are preserved and quoted, where the scriptures in English have always been known; scraps of writing hoarded, forbidden verses locked in the head. These things come down the generations, as eyes and noses come down, as meekness or the capacity for passion, as muscle power or the need to take a risk.

Travel ends and routine begins and old habits which you thought you had left behind in one country catch up with you in the next, and old problems resurface, but if you are lucky you carry as part of your baggage the means of solving those problems and accommodating those habits, and you take with you an open mind and discretion, and common sense; if you have those with you, you can manage anywhere.

The poor labourer owns his sleep and his stool, and can sell his piss to the fuller, whereas the king's piss and stool is the property of all England...should his bowel be loose, its product is taken away in a bowl under an embroidered cloth. They can only judge what is within him, by what comes out: a pity he is not made of glass.

I will have no alien interfere with my rule, and I will allow no traitor to shelter behind the cross of Christ.