Quotes from Hilary Mantel

Why are we so attached to the severities of the past?Why are we so proud of ourselves for having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.

Because Islam doesn't," he said, his voice toneless

Latimer says, 'Confession is not a sacrament. Show me where Christ ordained it.' Cranmer says, 'You will not get the king to agree.' Henry likes to utter his sin and be forgiven. He is sincerely sorry, he will not do it again. And in this case perhaps he will not. The temptation to cut off your wife's head does not arise every year.

If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone.

Há para tudo uma estação: uma estação para passar fome e uma estação para roubar.

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.

We councillors think we are men of vision and learning, we gravely delineate our position, set forth our plans and argue our case far into the night. Then some little girl sweeps through and upsets the candle and sets fire to our sleeve; leaves us slapping ourselves like madmen, trying to save our skin.

The role needs honest force and honeyed words, and a certain willingness to obfuscate about the intentions of the King of England: and as Wyatt says that to him nothing is ever clear, and no truth is a single truth, he seems the man for the job.

Listen, Cromwell. You don't get a good name among the lowly by sharing their concerns and handing out coin. You get their respect by overlooking them, as if you did not understand their sort, and your own belly had never been empty.' 'I could not so belie myself.

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 for ever and ever, a violent argument being carried on in the next room.

Wherever he goes he is cheered by the people.' 'The people?' Norfolk says. 'They'd cheer a Barbary ape. Who cares what they cheer? Hang 'em all.' 'But then who will you tax?' he says.

It seems there is no mercy in this world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

in case the dead ones rolled in late.

It was planned that they should be met, with their retinue, at the main gate, that they should descend from their carriage, and that the school's most industrious and meritorious pupil would read them a loyal address. When the day came, the weather was not fine.

think women carry this faculty into later life: the faculty for love, I mean. Men will never understand it till they stop confusing love with sex, which will be never. Even today, there are ten or twenty women I love: for a turn of phrase or wrist, for a bruised-looking ankle where the veins have blossomed out, for a squeeze of the hand or for a voice on the end of the phone. I would no more go to bed with any of them than I would drown myself; and drowning is my most feared form of death.

Life is not like detective stories. There is a wider scope for interpretation. The answers to all the questions that beset you are not in facts, which are the greatest illusion of all, but in your own heart, in your own habits, in your limitations, in your fear.

the English will forgive a king anything, until he tries to tax them.

There are moments when a memory moves right through you. You shy, you duck, you run; or else the past takes your fist and actuates it, without the intervention of will. Suppose you have a knife in your fist? That's how murder happens.

Metaphors are good,' he said. 'I like metaphors. Metaphors don't kill people.

life's work over, rural ennui stretching ahead: a procession of days, Sunday to Sunday, all without shape.

The king squeezes his shoulder. There is a new magic in the royal touch. It transmits a vision, a vision of what England could be. You imagine the city of London in the days when prophets walk its streets, when angels cluster on gable ends; you look up as you leave your house, hearing their strong wingbeats in the air.

The king's companions are prepared to march. So scented, the courtiers, so urbane: the rustle of silk, the soundless tread of padded shoes. But slaughter is their trade. Like butchers in the shambles, it is what they were reared for. Peace, to them, is just the interval between wars.

As a wife she must obey him: women must obey, even queens.

If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is Wolsey's creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old. Look at Norfolk, already he is sixty, his father was seventy when he fought at Flodden. And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say, now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but affairs?