“ If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels. Hilary Mantel
“ For hundreds of years the monks have held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be our history, but I do not believe it really is. I believe they have suppressed the history they don'… Hilary Mantel
“ But I want him north, Howard says. Tell him to go. Tell him Norfolk says he must be on the road and out of here. Or--and tell him this--I will come where he is, and I will tear him with my teeth.My lo… Hilary Mantel
“ We make great progress only at those times when we become melancholy—at those times when, discontented with the real world, we are forced to make for ourselves one more bearable. The Theory of Ambitio… Hilary Mantel
“ They say she has all the gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber, one after another. She don’t like delay so they all stand in a line frigging their members, till she shouts, Next. Hilary Mantel
“ The weight of the old world is stifling, and trying to shovel its weight off your life is tiring just to think about. The constant shuttling of opinions is tiring, and the shuffling of papers across d… Hilary Mantel
“ The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys. Hilary Mantel
“ The cardinal used to say, Cromewll will do in a week what will take another man a year, it is not worth your while to block him or oppose him. If you reach out to grip him he will not be there, he wil… Hilary Mantel
“ Some would think that it ought to come in the course of nature to a woman of thirty-six, a wife and mother. A little calm, a little quiet within - little chance. Even after childbearing, there is bloo… Hilary Mantel
“ So often in council he has taken Katherine’s part, as if he were one of her appointed lawyers. ‘You make this argument, my lords,’ he has said, ‘but the dowager princess will allege…’ And ‘Katherine w… Hilary Mantel
“ Men like Carew, he knows, tend to blame him, Cromwell, for Anne’s rise in the world; he facilitated it, he broke the old marriage and let in the new. He does not expect them to soften to him, to inclu… Hilary Mantel
“ May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into permanent session — what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term! Hilary Mantel
“ It is a wan morning, low unbroken cloud; the light, filtering sparely through glass, is the color of tarnished pewter. How brightly colored the king is, like the king in a new pack of cards: how small… Hilary Mantel
“ In his student days he was known for a sharp slanderous tongue, for irreverance to his seniors, for drinking and gaming for high stakes. But who would hold up his head, if people judged us by what we… Hilary Mantel
“ I think back to those days after the Bastille fell, the Mercure Nationale run from the back of the shop, that little Louise sticking her well-bred nose in the air and flouncing off to bawl out their p… Hilary Mantel
“ I once had every hope,’ he says. ‘The world corrupts me, I think. Or perhaps it's just the weather. It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a litt… Hilary Mantel
“ He wants to say, because Anne is not a carnal being, she is a calculating being, with a cold slick brain at work behind her hungry black eyes. I believe any woman who can say no to the King of England… Hilary Mantel
