Sign in with your pod

Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina

Hilary Mantel

128 quotes

• “The first news is always wrong,” he says.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Majesty, was it not an honest mistake?” “Women are the beginning of all mistakes. Read any of the divines, and they will tell you.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1537 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 3, Section 2, “The Image of the King. Spring-Summer 1537” (p. 420)

• “The monks present themselves as having lived like beggars, in garments ragged and patched, and without firewood or food stores. They have sold the firewood, of course, they have sold the grain, and unless you are swift on their trail they will pawn or bury their treasures.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1537 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 4, Section 1, “Nonsuch. Winter 1537-Spring 1538” (p. 468)

• “The purpose of ghost stories is extortion, generally: to frighten poor folks into paying for prayers and charms to protect them.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “His word is just what a diplomat’s word should be: as clear as glass and as unstable as water.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1538 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 4, Section 2, “Corpus Christi. June-December 1538 (p. 488)

• “Talk to Riche,” the king says, bored. “Riche?” Lord Lisle says. “There was never such a dip-pocket as he! He wants a shilling to say good morning to you!” “He’s a lawyer,” the king says, “how else do they make their shillings?”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Summer is coming, but the king rains and shines like April. Men change their religion as they change their coats. The council makes a resolution and next minute forgets it. We write letters and the words expunge. We are playing chess in the dark.” “On a board made of jelly,” he says. “With chessmen of butter.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1540 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 5, Section 3, “Magnificence. January-June 1540” (p. 682)

• “He is frightened of you, sir. You have outgrown him. You have gone beyond what any servant or subject should be.” It is the cardinal over again, he thinks. Wolsey was broken not for his failures, but for his successes; not for any error, but for grievances stored up, about how great he had become.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1540 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 6, Section 1, “Mirror. June-July 1540” (p. 703)

• “He thinks, ten years I have had my soul flattened and pressed till it’s not the thickness of paper. Henry has ground and ground me in the mill of his desires, and now I am fined down to dust I am no more use to him, I am powder in the wind. Princes hate those to whom they have incurred debts.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Treason can be construed from any scrap of paper, if the will is there. A syllable will do it. The power is in the hands of the reader, not the writer.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in this world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You shouldn’t believe in ghosts,” he says uncertainly. “I don’t,” Martin says. “But who are they to care, if I believe in them or not?”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He would like Wolsey to come in so they could have a game of chess: though you should never play chess with a prelate, they always have a pawn in their sleeves.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are all dying, just at different speeds.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He had thought, if ever I need to disappear, Venice is where I will come.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When he pictures Hell he can only think of a cold place, a wasteland, a wharf, a marsh, a landing stage; Walter distantly bawling, then the bawling coming nearer. That is how it will be—not pain itself, but the constant apprehension of pain; the constant apprehension of fault, the knowledge that you are going to be punished for something you couldn’t help and didn’t even know was wrong; and the discord in Hell will be constant, repeating for ever and ever, a violent argument being carried on in the next room.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Hilary Mantel: why I became a historical novelist", The Guardian (3 June 2017).

• “He never sees More—a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod—without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too. Show me where it says, in the Bible, “Purgatory.” Show me where it says “relics, monks, nuns.” Show me where it says “Pope.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1527 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 1, Section 3, “At Austin Friars. 1527” (p. 36)

• “He stands by a window. A flock of starlings settles among the tight black buds of a bare tree. Then, like black buds unfolding, they open their wings; they flutter and sing, stirring everything into motion, air, wings, black notes in music. He becomes aware that he is watching them with pleasure: that something almost extinct, some small gesture toward the future, is ready to welcome the spring; in some spare, desperate way, he is looking forward to Easter, the end of Lenten fasting, the end of penitence. There is a world beyond this black world. There is a world of the possible. A world where Anne can be queen is a world where Cromwell can be Cromwell. He sees it; then he doesn’t. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1530 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 3, Section 2, “Entirely Beloved Cromwell. Spring-December 1530” (p. 189)

• “He told me that you had a loathing of those in the religious life. That was why he found you diligent in his work.” “That was not the reason.” He looks up. “May I speak?” “Oh, for God’s sake,” Henry cries. “I wish someone would.” He is startled. Then he understands. Henry wants a conversation, on any topic. One that’s nothing to do with love, or hunting, or war. Now that Wolsey’s gone, there’s not much scope for it; unless you want to talk to a priest of some stripe. And if you send for a priest, what does it come back to? To love; to Anne; to what you want and can’t have. “If you ask me about the monks, I speak from experience, not prejudice, and though I have no doubt that some foundations are well governed, my experience has been of waste and corruption. May I suggest to Your Majesty that, if you wish to see a parade of the seven deadly sins, you do not organize a masque at court but call without notice at a monastery? I have seen monks who live like great lords, on the offerings of poor people who would rather buy a blessing than buy bread, and that is not Christian conduct. Nor do I take the monasteries to be the repositories of learning some believe they are. Was Grocyn a monk, or Colet, or Linacre, or any of our great scholars? They were university men. The monks take in children and use them as servants, they don’t even teach the dog Latin. I don’t grudge them some bodily comforts. It cannot always be Lent. What I cannot stomach is hypocrisy, fraud, idleness—their worn-out relics, their threadbare worship, and their lack of invention. When did anything good last come from a monastery? They do not invent, they only repeat, and what they repeat is corrupt. 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’t like, and written one that is favorable to Rome.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He says, this silence of More’s, it was never really silence, was it? It was loud with his treason; it was quibbling as far as quibbles would serve him, it was demurs and cavils, suave ambiguities. It was fear of plain words, or the assertion that plain words pervert themselves; More’s dictionary, against our dictionary. You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1535 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 6, Section 3, “To Wolf Hall. July 1535” (p. 597)

• “According to the custodians of holy relics, part of the power of these artefacts is that they are able to multiply. Bone, wood and stone have, like animals, the ability to breed, yet keep their intact nature; the offspring are in no wise inferior to the originals. So the crown of thorns blossoms. The cross of Christ puts out buds; it flourishes, like a living tree. Christ’s seamless coat weaves copies of itself. Nails give birth to nails. John ap Rice says, “Reason cannot win against these people. You try to open their eyes. But ranged against you are statues of the virgin that weep tears of blood.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In March, Parliament knocks back his new poor law. It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor; but if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, on the wool trade, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field. England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges. Men need work. It’s a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure. Can we not put them together, the hands and the task? But Parliament cannot see how it is the state’s job to create work. Are not these matters in God’s hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order? To everything there is a season: a time to starve and a time to thieve. If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it; for God knows his trade. It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy. And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality: well, are there not hangmen enough?”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I hear you will bring in a law,” Kingston says. “It seems harsh, to make them commit a crime in retrospect.” They try to explain it to the constable. A prince cannot be impeded by temporal distinctions: past, present, future. Nor can he excuse the past, just for being over and done. He can’t say, ‘all water under the bridges;’ the past is always trickling under the soil, a slow leak you can’t trace. Often, meaning is only revealed retrospectively. The will of God, for instance, is brought to light these days by more skilful translators. As for the future, the king’s desires move swiftly and the law must run to keep up. Bear in mind his Majesty’s remarkable foresight, at the trial of the late queen. He knew the sentence before the verdict was in. “True,” Kingston says. “The executioner was already on the sea.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The burden of kingship,” he says, “no man can imagine it. All my life, to be a prince: to be observed to be a prince; all eyes to be set on me; to be an exemplar of virtue, of discretion, of excellence in learning; to have a mind young and vigorous yet as wise as Solomon; to take pleasure in what others have designed for my pleasure, or be thought ungrateful; to discipline all my appetites, to unmake myself as a man in order to make myself as a king; to waste not a minute list I be seen to waste it; for idleness, no excuses; always alert to prove, always to show, that I am worthy of the place God appointed me…”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The monks crammed the corpse in a stone coffin and buried it in haste. But they took care to mark the spot where Becket died. The miracles began after two days. Frozen arms jerked in their sockets. Cripples danced. Hot as a devil’s fart, word rattled around Europe that the knave was a martyr for our Holy Mother Church, whereas really he was a martyr for his own pride. Within two years the Pope made him a saint. The clamour for relics began. His blood, diluted so only the memory of it remained, was sold through the known world. The spot the monks had marked became his shrine. Even the lice from his hair shirt were sacred. Fifty years after his death his remains were placed inside a new and rich feretory, on a platform behind the high altar. Soon the faithful had plated the chest in gold and studded it with gemstones. The King of France give a ruby the size of a hen’s egg. Queen Katherine was often a pilgrim here. The Emperor Charles has prayed to the bones.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He, Thomas, had paid for Masses for his soul. “Do you think it does any good?” he had said to the priest. “Don’t despair of him,” the fellow said. “He was rough but he wasn’t all bad.” “No,” he said, “I don’t mean, will prayers do Walter any good. I mean, do they do good for any dead person? God is watching us all our lives. Surely, if you live as long as Walter, God has formed a view. Unless he always knows.” “That sounds like heresy to me,” the priest said. “Of course it does. It hits your pocket. If God knows his mind, what becomes of your chantries and your rosaries and your fees for a thousand years of Masses?”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The guard make a wall, but Christophe’s arm snakes between them as if to touch him. One of the men raises his armoured fist. He hears a crack. He sees the boy’s face twist in shock and pain. Holding out his arm like a broken wing, his voice hoarse, his body convulsing, he speaks his curse: “Henry King of England! I, Christophe Cremuel, curse you. The Holy Ghost curses you. Your own mother curses you. I hope a leper spits on you. I hope your whore has the pox. I hope you go to sea in a boat with a hole in it. I hope the waters of your heart rise up and spout down your nose. May you fall under a cart. May rot rise up from your heels to your head, going slowly, so you take seven years to die. May God squash you. May Hell gape.”

  Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) first seen 1540 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Part 6, Section 2, “Light. 28 July 1540” (p. 752)