“ But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in t… Hilary Mantel
“ I think, if you're going to kill a man, do it. Don't write him a letter about it. Don't bluster and threaten and put him on his guard. Hilary Mantel
“ Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. Put your fingers here, he said. Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here. He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the si… Hilary Mantel
“ When men decided women could be educated - this is what I think - they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games, they made them wer… Hilary Mantel
“ What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the ga… Hilary Mantel
“ England is always remaking herself, her cliffs eroding, her sandbanks drifting, springs bubbling up in dead ground. They regroup themselves while we sleep, the landscapes through which we move, and ev… Hilary Mantel
“ Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety… Hilary Mantel
“ At first they’d thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale. Hilary Mantel
“ Who are the Brissotins? A good question.You see, if you accuse people of a crime (for example, and especially, conspiracy) and refuse to sever their trials, then it will at once be seen that they are… Hilary Mantel
“ Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More’s bo… Hilary Mantel
“ For I chase but one hind, he says, one strange deer timid and wild, and she leads me off the paths that other men have trod, and by myself into the depths of the wood. Hilary Mantel
“ I make up as little as possible. I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of t… Hilary Mantel
“ My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bag full of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes. What are the chances you will pull out the eel? Hilary Mantel
“ In order not to make a liar out of Henry or Katherine, one or the other, the committee men think up circumstances in which the match may have been partly consummated, or somewhat consummated, and to d… Hilary Mantel
“ He feared, in his secret heart, that one day in company the baby would sit up and speak; that it would engage his eyes, appraise him, and say, 'You prick. Hilary Mantel
“ When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. I… Hilary Mantel
