Quotes About Hilary Mantel

My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.

In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.

Write a 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.

I wouldn't dream of commenting on Hilary Mantel as a novelist, frankly I'd be grateful if she stayed off my patch as a historian. She is intelligent, she is bright, she is an admirable writer. I happen to find her Tudor novels unreadable, but that's because I am a Tudor historian.

Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.

My first two novels were very black comedies.

There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one. —Hilary Mantel

I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.

Bargain all you like. Consign yourself to the hangman if you must. The people don't give a fourpenny fuck." 512

Where is Richard, do you know?" "Chopping onions on the back step. Oh, you mean Master Richard? Upstairs. Eating. Where's anybody?

My migraine aura was now so severe that the world on the left had ceased to exist, except as an intermittent yellow flash.

Only then, Hans would insist on committing another portrait against me.

I felt," he said, "irritated. It seemed a waste, I suppose. To come so far. To cross the sea. To die for . . ." He shrugs. "God knows why.

The order goes to the Tower, 'Bring up the bodies.' Deliver, that is, the accused men, by name Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris, to Westminster Hall for trial. Kingston fetches them by barge; it is 12 May, a Friday.

In his day, castles repaired themselves, and all beggars were Christ in disguise.

Martyr More,' he says. 'The word is in Rome that he and Fisher are to be made saints.

Look up and see the wind, For we be ready to sail. Noah's Flood, a miracle play.

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

If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels.

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

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.

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