Quotes from Hilary Mantel

Let him hear the conclusion of events; he does not need to live through them.

Once Henry says, 'This is my wish,' it becomes so dear and familiar a wish that he thinks he has always had it. He names his need, and he wants it supplied.

Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart. . .

There is a pause, while she turns the great pages of her volume of rage, and puts her finger on just the right word. 'What you say, Cromwell, is…contemptible.

He will never claim, later, that his heart did not turn over. He is not one to boast of a coolness no reasonable man would possess.

I doubt if there is much I can teach them.

Oh yes – can we offer you an escort, Citizen Deputy, to a place of greater safety?' 'The grave,' Camille said. 'The grave.

You feel nauseous, from the sticky heat and what you know of human nature, and you wonder why you have come. But you have been told that a man must go at least once in his life, or he won't believe it when other people tells him what went on.

We are taxed till we cry, we must live till we die, we be looted and swindled and cheated and dwindled … O, Worse was it Never!

Gregory takes a bite of his pastry; Bella leans against his shin and adores him.

how short the step, from dreaming to desiring to encompassing. . . the thought is father to the deed, and the deed is born raw, ugly, premature.

I doubt if there is much I can teach them. Or much they can learn.

Well, you know how it is, some people are born with sour temperaments and they use the misfortunes in their lives as an excuse for them.

Utopia, after all, is not a place one can live.

She is never put down for long. That's why men like her. There will be other times, other men, others manners.

At this signal, the world turns upside down.

You can grow up, not what you would call a person of iron conviction; but you think there are things about you that won't change, beliefs you will always hold, things happening that will go on happening: a world that will do you for as long as you need it. Don't be deceived.

You seem very calm. Yes. Learn from it.

Trust your reader, stop patronising your reader, give your reader credit for being smart as you at least.

I am as I am and so will I be But how that I am, none knoweth truly Be it evil, be it well, be I bound, be I free, I am as I am and so will I be … … But how that is I leave to you. Judge as ye list, false or true Ye know no more than afore ye knew Yet I am as I am, whatever ensue.

Priests tell you that temptation slides into sin and you cannot put a hair between. But surely that is not true. Surely not. There is a room to be crossed and buttons to be undone. You don't sleepwalk into it. You don't fornicate inadvertently.

Right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for.

Ambition is a sin. So I am told. Thought I have never seen how it is different from using your talents, which the Bible commands we do.

The mind is its own best torturer.