“ Render me the texture of flesh. Pick me what it is, in the timbre of the voice, that marks out the living from the dead. Hilary Mantel
“ In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don’… Hilary Mantel
“ He is tired out from the effort of deciphering the world. Tired from the effort of smiling at the foe. Hilary Mantel
“ He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the… Hilary Mantel
“ Another man would have trouble imagining it, but he has no trouble. The red of a carpet’s ground, the flush of the robin’s breast or the chaffinch, the red of a wax seal or the heart of the rose: impl… Hilary Mantel
“ There's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon. Hilary Mantel
“ You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thin… Hilary Mantel
“ My migraine aura was now so severe that the world on the left had ceased to exist, except as an intermittent yellow flash. Hilary Mantel
“ Good morning, she said. Are you drunk?She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. Do I look it?No. Where is Citizen Danton?I’ve done away with him. I’ve been busy dismemb… Hilary Mantel
“ Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artefact of your mental illness. Hilary Mantel
