Hilary Mantel Quote

Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You’re afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it’s because of another kind of love, isn’t it, that the duty is laid upon you?

Hilary Mantel

Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You’re afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it’s because of another kind of love, isn’t it, that the duty is laid upon you?

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About Hilary Mantel

Dame Hilary Mary Mantel ( man-TEL; born Thompson; 6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: the first was for her 2009 novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and the second was for its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third installment of the Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was longlisted for the same prize. The trilogy has gone on to sell more than 5 million copies.