“ Every time you go to see Hamlet you don't expect it to have a happy ending...you're still enthralled.(Interview BBC Radio 4 Today 17 October 2012.) Hilary Mantel
“ So now get up.'Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned toward the gate, as if someone might arrive to help hi… Hilary Mantel
“ Henry stirs into life. 'Do I retain you for what is easy? Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of s… Hilary Mantel
“ I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case. Hilary Mantel
“ It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every you… Hilary Mantel
“ Queen Katherine, whose boys have all died, takes it patiently: that is to say, she suffers. Hilary Mantel
“ His suppressed grief becomes anger. But what can he do with anger? It must also be suppressed. Hilary Mantel
“ Vadier (on Danton): We’ll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end.Danton (on Vadier): Vadier? I’ll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in. Hilary Mantel
“ But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the mind.[Author Hilary Mantel on being told her en… Hilary Mantel
“ He runs his eye along the row of knives in their racks, the cleavers for splitting bones. He picks one up, looks at its edge, decides it needs sharpening and says, Do you think I look like a murderer?… Hilary Mantel
“ If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden… Hilary Mantel
“ He turns to the painting. I fear Mark was right.Who is Mark?A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer.Gregory says, Did you not know? Hilary Mantel
“ And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fang… Hilary Mantel
“ Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you. Hilary Mantel
“ The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad ca… Hilary Mantel
“ I picked up a snake once. In Italy.Why did you do that?For a bet.Was it poisonous?We didn't know. That was the point of the bet.Did it bite you?Of course.Why of course?It wouldn't be much of a story,… Hilary Mantel
“ In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or t… Hilary Mantel
