Quotes by Hilary Mantel

I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, and there are those who feel that happiness is not to be expected: that it is not, in fact, one of the rights of man. Nor, God knows, one of the rights of women.

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, dont just stick there scowling at the problem. But dont make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other peoples words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient., 25 February 2010]

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.

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 were collars and ties. It was a way to concede the right to learning, yet remain safe; the products of the system would always be inferior to the original model. Women were forced to imitate men, and bound not to succeed at it.

Those who are made can be unmade.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

Give me a book,” she said. “A book of sermons, anything.”“What do you want a book for?”“I want words. I’ve got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose.

You know Im not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the kings servant.

The thing people dont 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 capitaine says so, you are shifted abruptly in the middle of the night into some indefensible position, so you never really sleep, your equipment is defective, the gunners keep causing small unwanted explosions, the crossbowmen are either drunk or praying, the arrows are ordered up but not here yet, and your whole mind is occupied by a seething anxiety that things are going to go badly because il principe, or whatever little worshipfulness is in charge today, is not very good at the basic business of thinking. It didnt take him many winters to get out of fighting and into supply. In Italy, you could always fight in the summer, if you felt like it. If you wanted to go out.

Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief with a rambling-rose design. Instead Im on the rue des Cordeliers in pursuit of a baguette, with a three-inch blade for comfort.

The trouble with England, he thinks, is that its so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this mans daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.

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 side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.”Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh’ ...”Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.” Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Even you.” Fabre’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.” He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fabre said. “Even if it kills one of us.” Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.

This revolution - will it be a living?We must hope so. Look, I have to go, Im visiting a client. Hes going to be hanged tomorrow.Is that usual?Oh, they always hang my clients. Even in property and matrimonial cases.

As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camilles character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire.

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.

All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he thought, theres not much difference between politics and sex; its all aboutpower. He didnt suppose he was the first person in the world to make this observation. Its a question of seduction, and how fast and cheap you can effect it: if Camille, he thought, approximates to one of those little milliners who cant make ends meet - in other words, an absolute pushover - then Robespierre is a Carmelite, mind set on becoming Mother Superior. You cant corrupt her; you can wave your cock under her nose, and shes neither shocked nor interested: why should she be, when she hasnt the remotest ideawhat its for?

Sion calls Anne an eel, he calls her a slippery dipper from the slime, and he remembers what the cardinal had called her: my serpentine enemy. Sion says, she goes to it with her brother; he says, what, her brother George? ‘Any brother shes got. Those kind keep it in the family. They do filthy French tricks, like –’‘Can you keep your voice down?’ He looks around, as if spies might be swimming by the boat.‘– and thats how she trusts herself she dont give in to Henry, because if she lets him do it and she gets a boy hes, thanks very much, now clear off, girl – so shes oh, Your Highness, I never could allow – because she knows that very night her brothers inside her, licking her up to the lungs, and then hes, excuse me, sister, what shall I do with this big package – she says, oh,dont distress yourself, my lord brother, shove it up the back entry, itll come to no harm there.

Theres a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a womans sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.