Quotes from Hilary Mantel

It takes a generation, he says, to reconcile heads and hearts. Englishmen of every shire are wedded to what their nurses told them. They do not like to think too hard, or disturb the plan of the world that exists inside their heads, and they will not accept change unless it puts them in better ease. But new

Because I'm afraid of what may happen to you. You have no duty to me. We found ourselves—no, we put ourselves—on opposite sides. I never expected, I never dreamed, that our friendship could last so long with circumstances as they are.

Parliament is prorogued, but London lawyers, flapping their black gowns like crows, settle to their winter term.

Men will never understand it till they stop confusing love with sex, which will be never. (pp54)

You must have been studying her life.' 'We have a book in the convent library.' 'Is your library extensive?' 'Well, there's some lives of the saints. Oh, and a Turf Guide, that's Sister Anthony's.

What use to the king is a servant who is distracted, merely for want of a piece of bread?

I, he thinks, who am so soiled in life's battle, so seamed and scarred, so numb, so unwanted, so cold.

When they are alone, she lets him unlace her bodice.' 'At least he doesn't call you to do it.' 'He pulls down her shift and kisses her breasts.' 'Good man if he can find them.

Se o leão conhecesse a sua própria força, seria difícil dominá-lo.

Is a man a victim, who walks onto a knife? Are you innocent, if you set up the damage for yourself?

Yes, but friendship should be less exhausting . . . it should be restorative

Reginald's plain exterior gives no idea of the elaborate, useless nature of his mind, with its little shelves and niches for scruples and doubts.

Then after a day or two, Anne Madeleine simply added them to the number of her five children, who are fed on sight and conducted through the countryside on forced marches in an effort to subdue their spirits.

The duke stamps his feet, pushes back his chair, hauls his napkin loose from his person. Gardiner has opulent linen and it looks as if he is fighting his way out of a tent.

His displeasure! I am sure I have displeased him, he thinks. Look how he steamed and glared, that day I took a holiday. Look how he pawed the ground and rolled his eyes. This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.

lucky, he knows now, not to have got in with lowlifes who would lead him to be branded or whipped, or to be one of the small corpses fished out of the river.

I found an easier way to be.

That is how it will be—not pain itself, but the constant apprehension of pain; the constant apprehension of fault, the knowledge that you are going to be punished for something you couldn't help and didn't even know was wrong; and the discord in Hell will be constant, repeating

One can learn from that, he thinks.

He had thought that under their clothes people wore their skin.

So many words,' Gregory says. 'So many words and oaths and deeds, that when folk read of them in time to come they will hardly believe such a man as Lord Cromwell walked the earth. You do everything. You have everything. You are everything. So I beg you, grant me an inch of your broad earth, Father, and leave my wife to me.

occurs to him that when he is dead, other people will be getting on with their day;

This custody is for your protection.' 'You think it is I who needs protection? What about Cromwell here? Perhaps we should all take each other into custody?

It is an aromatic custard in a white dish. He saw the gooseberries earlier, tiny bubbles of green glass, sour as a friar on a fast day. For this dish you need fresh hens' eggs and a pitcher of cream; you need to be a prince of the church to afford the sugar. His uncle stands over him. The custard quakes in waves of sweetness and spice. 'Nutmeg,' he says. 'Mace. Cumin.' 'Now taste it.' 'And rosewater.